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Out of Darkness Into Light; 



FKOM 



The Journal of a Bereaved Mother, 



V 



BY MILDEED MIFFLIN. 



7*^' 




SHELBYVILLE, ILL.: 

PBINTED AT OFFICE OF OUR BEST WORDS. 

1888. 



■^-^'i 
^^*^ 



Copyright, 1888. 

BY JASPEE L. DOUTHIT* 



TO THE MEMORY 

OF 

THE DEAK CHILD 

WHOSE LIFE AND DEATH INSPIRED IT, 

THIS WORK 

IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED 

BY 

THE AUTHOR. 



^'In Heaven, their angels do always iehold the 
face of my Father which is in Heaven/'— Jt^^vs, 



CONTENTS. 



Page 

I. In the Depths ...... 1 

II. Looking Towaed the Light ... 19 

III. Do We Live Again? 37 

lY. We Do Not Die; Death is But a Change in 

the Conditions of Our Being . . 48 

V. Heaven, and What It Holds for Us . . 67 
VI. The Mission of Sorrow; the Loving Purpose 

OF God in Affliction .... 143 






m 



OUT OF DARKNESS INTO LIGHT. 



I. 

IN THE DEPTHS. 



March 10th. — The calendar is right, doubtless, 
but it seems a long time since I opened this journal 
on the morning of the 1st inst. to jot down a few 
little incidents, so pleasant to me then, but now, so 
utterly insignificant ! 

It w^as lying on the stand in the corner, on that 
dreadful day, just as I had left it after making the 
last entry; and, somehow, it seemed to mock me 
with its cheerful look, so I put it away in the book- 
case, where I sedulously passed it by, again and 
again, in my search for something to beguile the 
weary hours. 

It seemed as though I could not bear to look 
upon what my hand had written and my heart dic- 
tated, when life was glad and sweet, and my spirit 
buoyant with life and trust. To-day, as my eye fell 
upon the familiar cover, a new impulse seized me; — 
I would confide to my faithful journal the story of 
my grief, even as I had committed to its keeping my 



2 OUT OF DABKKESS INTO LIGHT 

large experience of joy. Who could tell but its 
mute sympathy might lighten the dreadful burden 
I was bearing alone ? 

Oh, then, friend of my happy hours ! I will no 
longer deny myself the solace of thy presence in 
the time of my greatest need, nor withhold from 
thee the confidence thou hast so well deserved. 
Alas! alas! that the shadow and the darkness should 
have fallen so early! — that the dart which pierces 
me through should have been so swift, so merciless! 

Oh! " Never was sorrow like unto my sorrow ! '' 
All the bitterness of Marah is in m}^ cup. My first- 
born, my pearl of great price, my precious Ruby, 
has been suddenly snatched from my embrace and 
hidden from my sight forever. She, who was always 
near me, who was my joy and my hope, is gone never 
more to return. Never? No! never! never!! How 
can I hear it? 

No more to see her face or hear. her voice or feel 
the touch of her warm hands in soft caresses! — no 
more to plan and work and hope for her! — no more 
to prepare for her gjing, or wait and watch for her 
coming! — no more for ever! 

And all this rushes over me like a flood, over- 
powering my poor soul, and leaving me helpless, 
hopeless, crushed! 

Now can I feel the sublime pathos of that agoniz- 
ed cry which was wrung from the lips of King David 
when the evil tidings first came to him, and he went 
up to the ''chamber over the gate" and wept, ''O, 
my son Absalom ! my son, my son Absalom ! would 



IN THE DEPTHS. 



God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my 
son!" 

Now I understand, as never before, the bitterness 
of that dreadful lamentation in Rama, " Rachel 
weeping for her children and refusing to be comfort- 
ed, because they are not." 

Now, indeed, have I something in common with 
the desolate, heart-broken Rizpah, watching beside 
the bodies of her murdered sons, on the lonely rocks 
of Gibeah! 

And oh! this mourning for my first-born child 
brings me into nearer sympathy with that unex- 
ampled grief which must have rent the heart of 
Mary, the mother of Jesus, as she beheld him, in 
whom was the hope of her race, dying the ignomini- 
ous death of the cross! 

Truly, hers was^theutmost sorrow and crowning 
consecration of motherhood!" Hers was an experi- 
ence which must ever sanctify the mother-love and 
dignify the mother-grief, however distracting or 
overwhelming it may seem. 

There is a Pieta of Michael Angelo at Genoa and 
another in St. Peter's in which "the virgin mother's 
gaze upon her dead son," says Mrs. Craik, "seems 
to express all the motherhood, and all the grief for 
the dead since the foundation of the world." Yet, 
there is no record of rebellious murmuring, on her 
part. If her faith was shadowed by the darkness of 
doubt, or shaken in the struggle with dispair, she 
made no sign. In the light of her heroic endurance 
and Christ-like patience (might she not have learned 



OUT OF DARKNESS INTO LIGHT. 



of the son she so loved?) how ignoble appears my 
wild, tumultuous grief,-my strong, rebellious will! 

Ah! Is it true that I have worn 

The image of my Lord, 
And, through so many years, have borne 

His name, and loved his word,— 
That I have breathed his spirit m, 

And striven his will to know,— 
That I have made his riches mine, 

Yet cannot bear— one blow ! 
Oh' Have I taken from his hand. 

Gifts, many, rich and rare;— 
A brotherhood, a glorious land— 

A home, as Eden, fair,— 
The love of hearts, his oivn great love, 

And every good I've sought 
E'en to the hope of Heaven above. 
Yet, cannot give Him—anght. 

Alas^ we know not how little we can bear, while we 
walk, nnscathed, amid the afflictions which fall up- 
on our fellows. . 

We may have been wont to offer consolation, out 
of hearts overflowing with sympathy, to our bereayed 
and mourning friends, but it is only when the iron 
has entered our own souls" that we know the mean- 
ing of sorrow. -But now it is come ^Pon thee and 
thou faintest, it toucheth thee, and thou art troubled. 

Even those great, pure souls, who have given the 
noblest thoughts to the world, from whose songs of 
sadness, full of tender, yearning, human sympathy, 
BO many stricken hearts have drawn ^omfor and 
hope, sometimes -faint" when ^4t toucheth them. 
They stand appalled before the new revelation of sor 
row when Death has invaded their own sacred told 



IX THE DEPTHS. 



and taken from the little flock, one of their own pre- 
cious lambs. 

Among the many remininiscences of Mr. Emer- 
son, which have lately been published, is one which 
illustrates this. Miss Louisa M. Alcott, having been 
sent, when a child, to enquire about little Waldo, who 
was 'very ill, thus describes her impression of this 
good man's grief. "He came to me so worn with 
watching, and changed by sorrow, that I was startled, 
and could only stammer out my message. 'Child, he 
is dead,' was his answer. Then the door closed and 
I ran home to tell the sad tidings. I was only eight 
years old, and that was my first glimpse of a great 
grief, but I never have forgotten the anguish that 
made a familiar face so tragical, and gave those few 
words more pathos than the sweet lamentation of the 
'Threnody.' " Said Mrs. Drappehs— whose facile pen 
had wrought many a plaintive melody— in a letter to 
me soon after the death of her mother, "If I could 
only sit at her feet for one hour! and I had her all 
my life, and never, it seems, had even dreamed of 
this, that death really is! Oh! it is so terrible to bear 
and even to think of, to live on and on without her, 
never once more, except in dreams, to see or touch 
her! The only comfort I have in lying down at night, 
is the hope of some little glimpse of her, in my sleep; 
and in the morning, my rising up seems to no pur- 
pose, since the day ivill not bring her! 

''And oh! the days and weeks to come with their 
nevitable sorrows, stretching out, through years and 
years! I sometimes wish I could take a journey, but 



e OUT OF DARKNESS INTO LIGHT. 

there would be the coining back! — and, at times, it 
seems that I cannot go on living here^ but how could 
I leave her grave ? And so with vain wishes and un- 
availing regrets and bitterest self-accusings, I get 
through the days, and am not sick or crazed, though 
sometimes not far from either." 

How little did I think, when this letter came to 
me, while my happy little household was unbroken, 
that I should so soon take up her bitter lamentation; 
so soon find, in my own painful experience, an exact 
counterpart of hers ! 

"Unavailing regrets and bitterest self-accusings!" 
Ah ! I have but just learned the meaning of these. I 
remember wondering, when I first read her letter, 
what she could possibly have to regret, — she who was 
the most loving of daughters — or of what she could 
find the heart to accuse herself, whose devotion to her 
mother was unbounded, whose life had been, as it 
were, a continual sacrament of loving and faithful 
service. 

But since the dreadful bolt fell upon me, I can re- 
call nothing but mistakes and errors, nothing but in- 
attention and forgetfulness, in connection with my 
poor, lost Kuby. The remembrance of any undue 
harshness toward her little foibles, or undeserved re- 
buke of her childish faults, or thoughtless neglect of 
her numerous needs, has pierced me through with 
many sorrows. 

How truly, "with bitterest self-accusings do / get 
through the days!" 



IN THE DEPTHS. 



''Wlieii death, the great reconciler has come," 
said George Eliot, "it is never our tenderness that we 
repent of, but our severity." 

E veiling. — Oh! the dreadful sense of loss, which 
so overwhelms me, that I cannot shake it off, for a 
moment! Oh! the dreary loneliness, the "vacant 
place," which confronts me at every step! For was 
not Ruby everywhere? Did she not fill my heart and 
my life? 

"All the magic light 

Dies off at once from bower and hall 
And all the place is dark, and all 
The chambers emptied of delight." 

How utterly blank and hopeless seems all the 
wide future, but lately so full of rich promise, so 
bright with glowing anticipations! Everything is 
changed; nothing is as it was; the days drag wearily 
on, the weeks, all unnoticed, will soon lose themselves 
in the months, and the months, which seem to have 
nothing for us, will bring the accustomed round of 
seasons. 

The summer Avill come, with the beautiful flowers 
site loved so much, and the soft winds which used to 
whisper to her among the leaves of the orchard-trees, 
and the delicious fruits, she was wont to gather with 
such eager hands ; with the golden sunsets and dreamy 
twilight hours, and glorious, moonlit evenings she en- 
joyed so heartily, but we shall behold all with a sick- 
ening sense of pain, as we miss her from the lovely 
pageant! And Autumn, with its gorgeous robe of 
many hues, and AVinter, with its cold shroud of snow, 
yes, and Spring — this will never seem like Spring — 



OUT OF DABKNESS INTO LIGHT. 



with all its sweet and tender prophecies, as of old, are 
certain to come again, but never more our darling 
Enby! 

I have just been reading how travelers visiting 
Rome and finding its attractions very charming, are 
accustomed jnst before their reluctant departure, to 
throw some pennies and a glass tumbler into the 
fountain of Trevi, as an augury of return. But alas! 
though this was such a delightful world to Ruby, and 
though she was filled with admiration and love for 
everything in it, I look in vain among the little treas- 
ures she left behind, for any faintest intimation of 
return, any smallest hint or token of a reunion here. 
"It is beyond all hope, against all chance." All silent 
dark and cold seems the way she went and we know 
alas! too well, that she has gone to that "bourne 
whence no traveler returns," not even to bring us 
tidings. 

"The asking eye • 

And ear are answerless; 
The grave is dumb, the hollow sky 

Is sad with silentness." — WJiittier, 

Yet, my soul cries out for her in the deep night- 
watches; and my empty arms stretch idly toward 
Heaven, with such nameless longing to enfold her! 

"Why will one still of words keep weaving 

Who has done with speech? — 
Why longer persist in calling and calling 

When quite out of reach? 
Is it the stress of thought's old habit, 

Automaton-like ? 
As clocks, long hours in halls deserted, 

All uselessly strike? 



IN THE DEPTHS. 



"Or springs there, e'en from the depths of disaster 

The hope of escape — 
Like the sudden flash on the dark of a dungeon 

Of a heavenly shape? 
Well, if it be so, or if not, what matters? 

Since fate is still fate ! 
And prayer and hope prove alike unprevailing 

When all is too late."— il^f?^s. M. E. Sheppard. 

In the extremity of my grief, I can only cry 
out, as I have been doing for days and days, ''My 
God, my God, why hast thon forsaken me?" un- 
derstanding in my wretchedness, my blindness and 
darkness of miDd, as in no lucid, happy moment of 
my life, the depth and intensity of our Savior's an- 
guish, when he uttered those words, "Eloi, Eloi, lama 
sabacthani." 

Said our good pastor to me on the day of Kuby's 
burial, "I believe you will live to feel that this af- 
fliction is for the best." It is hard for me, with my 
fresh sorrow and my sore heart, to understand how 
this can be, but I remember the Psalmist said, 
"Unto the upright, there ariseth light in the dark- 
ness;" and I try to hope that sometime I may dare 
to claim this promise — to believe that, 

"Some day, thy love will make the secret plain; 

Some day, my darkness blossom into light, 
And patience, from the bitter root of pain 

Bring fair, ripe fruit to bless my aching sight." 

''If I stoop," says Browning, 

"Into a dark, tremendous sea of cloud, 
It is but for a time. I press God's lamp 
Close to my breast, its splendor soon or late, 
Will pierce the gloom. I shall emerge one day." 
— Paracelsus, 



10 OUT OF DARKNESS INTO LIGHT. 

March 13th. — I must be very slow in coming to 
the light. I feel like one walled in by impenetrable 
depths of gloom — shut up to the pain and misery of 
a lifetime. 

My soul is a caged bird, beating incessantly, yet 
hopelessly, against the unyielding bars of fate. Oh I 
will resignation never come to me? Can I not learn 
to say, with my heart, not my will, O Lord, but 
thine, be done? 

In that sweetly pathetic poem of Jean Ingelow's 
"Scholar and Carpenter," she has these touching pass- 
ages, which seem, as I read them, like a wonderfully 
clear recital of my own experience. 

''And when her funeral left my door 

I thought that I should nevermore 
Feel any pleasure near me glowP 

'*The daily wakening was the worst 

For then my grief arose, and burst 

Like something fresh upon my head ; 
Yet, when less keen it seemed to grow, 
I was not pleased — I wished to go 
Mourning adown this vale of woe, 

For all my life U7icomforted, 

"I grudged myself the lightsome air 
That makes man cheerful, unaware; 
When comfort came, I did not care 
To take it in, to feel it stir." 

Yet, is there not a beautiful lesson for me in these 
other lines? 

"But I have learned 

'Tis sometimes natural to be glad, 
And no man can be alicays sad 
Unless he wills to have it so." 

"Ah!" said Madame Guyon, "If you knew what 
peace there is in an accepted sorrow." 



IN THE DEPTHS, 11 



March 14. — ''Direct lies the path to a friend 
faithful," says the Havamdl, ''though he chvelleth 
afar off." So swiftly flew the news of my affliction, 
over this path, that already many welcome messages 
of love and sympathy have found their way to me 
from friends, faithful and true, though far away. 

Not one has written me like the clumsy com- 
forter in "InMemoriam," "that other friends remain," 
or that "loss is common to the race." No oft-re- 
peated sayings, or worn out aphorisms have -been 
adapted to my needs in these letters, which are so 
precious to me; but, full of tender pity and warm 
and generous human sympathy, they have opened 
the floodgates anew; they are like the tears of a 
friend, dropping gently at my side while his lips are 
silent; they make me weep afresh. 

One, a letter from my beloved Aunt Phillips, who 
has herself been through the deep waters of affliction, 
is rich in that sweet consolation, which can only come 
from a soul, strong, sustained and trustful, — a soul 
that has learned submission and resignation, while 
passing under the rod. 

All I can do is to rain tears upon it, to read it 
over and over, as one reads a beautiful passage from 
some great author, whose meaning one cannot quite 
fathom ; for, oh ! I have not attained to her, in the in- 
tricacies of the heavenly language; my comprehen- 
sion has not been enlightened by that unquestioning 
obedience and unfaltering trust, which have opened to 
her the secrets of the Divine discipline, and made 
clear to her the beneficence of the Di\dne purpose ! 



12 OUT OF DARKNESS INTO LIGHT. 

"It seems strange to us," she says, "that the good 
and promising are so early cut down, but we have no 
right to question the wisdom of our dear Heavenly 
Father. He sees the end from the beginning : all is 
safe in his hands." 

And, farther on, she tells me of the loss of her 
darling little Janie, whom I remember as a lovely, 
prattling cherub of four summers. 

"After her death," said she, "I began immediate- 
ly to reproach myself; to think that if I had only 
done this or that, or if I had not done thus and so, 
my child might have lived. But," she added, "one 
passage of Scripture hushed me, effectually, it was 
this, 'Be still, and know that I am God.' And ever 
since, when he has seen fit to lay his hand upon me, 
be it ever so heavily, I have been enabled by his 

grace, to 'be still' In eternity we shall know 

why He has taken our loved ones. I would not call 
miiie back, if I could." 

And dear, patient Aunt Lydia, who has been an 
invalid and a sufferer, nearly twenty-five years, writes 
from her bed, out of the beautiful treasures of a sanc- 
tified heart, many sweet, consoling thoughts. 

To her, death is but the entrance to life and joy, 
and heaven, a glorious reality, only separated from 
earth, by a veil, through which the faithful may look 
and behold their rest. She has had many refreshing 
glimpses of this beautiful land and has no more doubt 
of our inheritance there, than of the rising of to-mor- 
row's sun. Nay, not half so much; for should that 
great luminary burn himself out, by the fierceness of 



IN THE DEPTHS, 13 



liis own heat, or the Heavens be "rolled together as a 
scroll," she '''knows'' that our ''Eedeemer liveth" and 
that he went to "prepare a place for us." 

Her heart is stayed on God, so that nothing can 
make her afraid. She rests in His love as a child, in 
the maternal arms. Her peace is indeed "like a river," 
broad and deep and still, coming silently down from 
the springs of Divine fullness, and flowing steadily 
onward toward the sea of Heavenly rest ! 

And she has unbounded confidence in the suffi- 
ciency for all, of this blessing of peace — the peace of 
God, which passeth all human understanding. "I 
pray earnestly," she says, "for you, and I do believe 
that you will not always carry this burden on your 
heart. God will come and deliver you out of all your 
troubles and bring you into light, peace and joy such 
as you have never known; and then you will learn, in 
your hearts to trust Him, and you will sweetly give 
back to Him, the precious jewel, which was all the 
while, His own; — which was only lent to you." 

And dear Cousin MoUie (Mrs. Drappehs) who 
lost her only child many years ago, and who is thus 
before me in the experience of the mother's sorrow, 
says, near the close of her letter, "Well, you had her; 
had the hope and joy and promise of her sweet life, 
eleven years, and before any of them had failed you, 
they were rendered immortal. You will never de- 
spair of her; — never be distressed at any coming mis- 
chance to her. She has gone to the blest fulfillment 
of all good foretastes. 

"Do be comforted! 



U OUT OF DARKNESS INTO LIGHT, 

"Mother loved Euby, and if the attachments and 
affiliations of earth survive in the world beyond, 
there was many a warm welcome for the child. She 
will not be lonely in those far away mansions, 
whither so many of her kindred have gone before 
her." 

And my yonnger cousin — the dear "little Beth" 
of the olden time — the petted playmate and charm- 
ing companion of my childhood-days, in our far 
away home, is full of tender compassion for me, 
which she owns, in her letter, she does not know how 
to express. Bless her dear heart! How should s/ze 
know the language of condolence ? — she whose happy 
home the destroying angel has studiously passed 
over! who has all her own dear ones about her — an 
unbroken family-circle, rejoicing daily in the ex- 
uberance of life and love and hope! 

Her idols have not been shattered! The blight 
has not touched her lovely blossoms! She could not 
know — oh ! may it be long before she knows — the bit- 
terness of bereavement and hence, the secret of con- 
solation ! 

Jessie M., a teacher of Ruby's to whom she was 
much attached, writes: "May the thought that Kuby 
has gone to a more tender and loving parent than 
any earthly one, comfort you in your grief !" 

And Cousin Amanda, who is the last of her fam- 
ily; — dwelling alone in the solitude of the home 
which once rang with happy voices, seems appalled 
by the suddenness and magnitude of my calamity. 



IN THE DEPTHS. 15 

Here is a letter, superscribed in her well-knowii 
hand, but on opening it, instead of the usual closely 
written pages, packed full of wit and wisdom, I find 
in the center of the pure white sheet, these words, 
"I am dumb before your great sorrow ! Though con- 
stantly thinking of you, I will not multiply words, 
for I feel that in silence is my best sympathy." 

And so on through the list — not a breath of cen- 
sure, nor a word that grates harshly, not a single 
mistaken or untimely utterance mars the beauty of 
these blessed testimonials of the love and sympathy 
of friends. They are like the gentle dews of Heaven 
falling upon the parched and withered grass; and 
though they cannot heal my heart, nor fill the void in 
my life, they awaken a grateful and lo\dng remem- 
brance of those who sent them, which is good for the 
soul. 

March 19. — Looking over what I have written 
here since the death of my little daughter, and feel- 
ing how inadequate it all is to express half the pain 
and anguish of soul which I have experienced, I 
recall, with a new and clearer comprehension of their 
meaning, these lines of Tennyson: 



"I sometimes hold it half a sin 
To put in words the grief I feel; 
For words, like Nature, half reveal 

And half conceal the soul within. 



But for the unquiet heart and brain, 
A use in measured language lies, 
The sad mechanic exercise, 

Like dull narcotics, numbing pain. 



16 OUT OF DARKNESS IXTO LIGHT. 

In words, like needs, I'll wrap me o'er, 
Like coarsest clothes against the cold; 
But that large grief which these enfold, 

Is given in outline and no more." 

I have also stumbled upon a startling revelation, 
in these few pages. Oh ! have I indeed been so over- 
whelmed by the loss of one whom God has taken, that 
I have quite for goUen the dear ones he has left to me? 
Has my own grief so absorbed me that I have ig- 
nored the sorrow of the rest, and forgotten to sym- 
pathize with them in their pain? 

I fear it must be so, for I see that no mention is 
made here of any living ones; not a word of poor 
Llewen, whose loss is not less than mine; — whose 
father's heart bleeds hourly, as he misses the famil- 
iar presence. Not a word of poor little Daisy, who 
moves about the house, like the shadow of her former 
self — all her jojous songs and jubilant noise hushed 
in a dreadful silence. Not a word of dear, faithful 
Aunt Lizzie whom Ruby loved so much; and who, 
when the tidings of our loss reached her, stopped not 
to "confer with flesh and blood," but left her work in- 
stantly, and raade ready to come to us, traveling night 
and day, alone, a thousand miles, that she might look 
once more upon the face of the dear child whom she 
had loved and cared for in infancy. 

I am amazed that I could think only of the grief 
which rent my own heart, and, brooding over my own 
loss and pain, forget that it was not mine alone, but 
theirs. 

Alas! sorrow is indeed selfish! God forgive me! 
Henceforth I will try to share with them whatsoever 



IN THE DEPTHS. 17 



lie sends, helping to bear the burden of their sorrows, 

even as I would give to them freely of all my joys. 

I often thiok of Aubrey DeVere's ideal of what 

grief should be, and wonder if mine can ever attain to 

any likeness thereto. But, if it ever does, I am sure 

it must first cease to be selfish. 

"Grief should be 
Like joy, — majestic, equable, sedate, 
Confirming, cleansing, raising, making free, 
Strong to consume small troubles; to command 
Great thoughts, grave thoughts, thoughts lasting to the end." 

April 20. — I have been thinking so much, lately, 
of what Ruby is, and what her lot may be. In the aw- 
ful silence, the painful void, the restless waiting for 
one who never comes, which follow the first shock of 
bereavement, we cannot repress the mute questionings 
of onr stricken souls. Is she living? Is she, in all 
respects, the same — the very same, and still our own — 
our very own ? Or, is this, what it seems to mortal 
vision, the end, — the end of all ! 

"In Memoriam," which has been called 'Hhe 
psalm of faith of the nineteenth century," has a weird 
but beautiful picture, which illustrates this weakness 
of our human trust. Waiting anxiously for the com- 
ing across the waters of his "lost Arthur's loved re- 
mains," the writer says : 

*'Lo, as a dove when up she springs 
To bear through heaven a tale of woe, 
Some dolorous message — knit below 

The wild pulsation of her wings; 

Like her, I go; I cannot stay; 

I leave this mortal ark behind, 

A weight of nerves without a mind, 
And leave the cliffs, and haste away 



18 OUT OF DARKNESS INTO LIGHT. 

O'er ocean — mirrors rounded large, 
And reach the glow of southern skies, 
And see the sails at distance rise, 

And linger weeping on the marge, 

And saying, ^Comes he thus, my friend? 

Is this the end of all my care?' 

And circle moaning in the air : 
^Is this the end? Is this the end?' " 

Not less wildly, thongh they cannot escape "this 
mortal ark," do onr spirits cry out, "is this the end f 
But oh! with what restful sweetness come to us, in our 
dreadful darkness and doubt, the words of Jesus, "Be- 
cause I live, ye shall live, also," and "In my Father's 
house are many mansions; if it were not so I would 
have told you, I go to prepare a place for you." 

Oh! then, though the "Valley" was dark, into 
which, with many tears we saw our Ruby enter, and 
the fair portals were shadowed in impenetrable gloom, 
it was the way he went — the immortal Son of God; be- 
fore whose lightest touch the everlasting gates must 
open, and the glory of the many mansions be revealed. 

I am too weak for reasoning, too sad for rejoicing; 
but I want to cling to this thought, until I am able to 
fathom its depth and trust its promise. 



II. 

LOOKING TOWAED THE LIGHT. 

March 25th. — It is only within a few days that 
I have been able even to ivish to be comforted; — to 
make the least attempt to lift myself out of the shadow 
and into the light; and, though my efforts seem very 
feeble and ineffectual, I believe it is better for the 
soul to be groping toward the light, however blindly, 
than to give itself wholly to the dominion of sorrow. 

Mrs. Lydia Maria Child, of whom Lowell wrote, 
in his fable for the critics, "No doubt against many 
deep griefs she prevails," used to say, "I seek cheer- 
fulness in every possible way. I read only chipper 
books. I hang prisms in my windows, to jfiU the 
room with rainbows." 

And the poet Whittier sings: 

"All the windows of my heart, 
I open to the day." 

He, at least, obejed the pious injunction of Fenelon, 

"Open your heart; open it without measure, that God 

and His love may enter without measure." 

So wrote Emerson, adding also, the answer we 

may receive through the open windows of the heart: 

*'Wilt thou not ope thy heart to know 
What rainbows teach and sunsets show? 
Voice of Earth to Earth returned, 
Prayers of saints that inly burned, 
Saying: ^What is excellent. 
As God lives, is 2)erinanent', 
Hearts are dust, hearts' loves remain: 
Hearts' love will meet thee again.' " 



20 OUT OF DARKNESS INTO LIGHT. 

Comfort is a guest which, though it may some- 
times come uninvited, stealing so softly into the 
heart, that we are not aware of its entrance, is yet 
more beautiful in its presence, more constant and 
abiding, when we seek it earnestly and welcome its 
coming with gladness. I have been reading some 
this week, and find that many of the writers we so 
much admire and love, have drunk deeply of the 
wine of sorrow, and found, in the depths of suffering 
and misery, the blessing of peace. 

A little poem of Dr. Bethune's, to which Sister 
Lizzie called my attention this morning, is so touch- 
ingly beautiful that I transcribe it here, in full, lest 
I should lose or forget it. 

"Within her downy cradle lay a little child, 

And a group of hovering- angels, unseen, upon her smiled, 

When a strife arose among them, a lo^dng, holy strife, 

Which should shed the richest blessing, o'er the new-born life. 

One breathed upon her features, and the babe in beauty grew, 
With a cheek like morning's blushes, and an eye of azure blue; 
Till every one who saw her was thankful for the sight 
Of a face, so sweet and radiant with ever fresh delight. 

Another gave her accents and a voice as musical 
As a spring-bird's joyous carol, or a rippling streamlet's fall, 
Till all who heard her laughing, or her words of childish grace, 
Loved as much to listen to her, as to look upon her face. 

Another brought from heaven, a clear and gentle mind. 
And within the lovely casket the precious gem enshrined, 
Till all who knew her wondered, that God should be so good, 
As to bless with such a spirit, a world so cold and rude. 

Thus did she grow in beauty, in melody and truth, 
The budding of her childhood, just opening into youth, 
And to our hearts yet dearer every moment than before 
She became; though we thought, fondly, heart could not love 
her more. 



LOOKING TOWARD THE LIGHT. 21 

Then out spoke another angel, nobler, brighter than the rest, 
As with strong arm but tender, he caught her to his breast, 
'Ye have made her all too lovely for a child of mortal race, 
But no shade of human sorrow, shall darken o'er her face. 

'Ye have tuned to gladness only the accents of her tongue. 
And no wail of human anguish shall from her lips be wrung; 
Nor shall the soul that shineth so purely from within 
Her form of earth-born frailty, e'er know a sense of sin. 

'Lulled in my faithful bosom, I will bear her far away — 
Where there is no sin or anguish, nor sorrow or decay, 
And mine, a boon more glorious than all your gifts shall be ; 
Lo! / croivn her happy spirit u'ith immortality!' 

Then on his breast our darling yielded up her gentle breath. 
For the stronger, brighter angel who loved her best, was 
Death." 

I must also quote a few passages from ''Euthan- 
asy" (Gr. Eidhanasia, signifying peaceful; a happy 
death), a book which is chiefly remarkable for its 
spirituality and the poetic grace and beauty of its 
style. I see, by a late notice of this work, that it 
has passed through several editions, and I trust it 
will continue long to infuse its sweet and beautiful 
spirit into the hearts and lives of men. 

Especially will those who 

"Long to know the fashion 
Of the life that is to be," 

find much in it that is pleasant and hopeful. What 
a picture of our future selves is there in this, for 
instance. ''Our souls will be pure with the pui'ity 
with which morning used to blush in the east ; and 
they will be beautiful with the beauty with which 
evening lingered in the west ; and they will be lovely 
with the loveliness of moonlight among the trees ; 
and they will be peaceful with the peace, into which, 
on summer evenings. Nature often hushed herself." 



22 OUT OF DARKNESS INTO LIGHT. 

Here are a few more paragraphs into which are 
woven, most gracefully, similar tributes to the 
beauty of Nature, with which the author seems 
everywhere very much in love. 

"This world is so beautiful, that it is like a Di^dne 
smile about us always, and it is so hopeful that we 
ought to die out of it, quite willingly and courage- 
ously." 

"When tree or river or rock shows beauty, and 
my soul answers to it, it is as though the spirit of 
Nature said, 'We understand one another; and so 
thou art mine and I am thine.' And then every thing 
in Nature seems dear; and death, if not very dear, 
seems beautiful and worthy of infinite trust." 

"The evening of life ought to deepen on to the 
obscurity of the grave, as pleasantly as dusk gets 
dark." 

And here is something at once quaint and unique. 

"The years of old age are stalls in the cathedral 
of life, in which for aged men to sit and listen and 
meditate and be patient till the service is over, and in 
which they may get themselves ready to say 'amen,' 
at the last, with all their hearts and souls and 
strength." 

I will only add one or two more paragraphs. 

"It is not in the bright, happy day, but only in 
the solemn night, that other worlds are to be seen 
shining in their long, long distances. And it is in 
sorrow — the night of the soul — that we see farthest 
and know ourselves natives of infinity, and sons and 
daughters of the Most High. 



LOOKING TOWARD THE LIGHT, 23 

"Only let us love God, and then Nature will 
compass us about like a cloud o£ divine witnesses, 
and all influences from the earth, and things on the 
earth, will be the ministers of God to do us good. 
, . . . Only let there be God within us, and then 
everything outside us will become a god-like help." 

April 27. — I am surprised that in my reading 
I find so many things which seem to have been writ- 
ten expressly for me, though I cannot yet take them 
all in. 

I have read, over and over, with a hopeless sort 

of reluctant belief in it, this bit of a poem, the 

authorship of which is unknown to me : 

"Child of my love, lean hard, 

A.nd let me feel the pressure of thy care. 

I hnow thy burden child; I shaped it, 

Poised it in my own hand; made no proportion 

In its weight to thine unaided strength; 

For soon as I laid it on, I said, 

^I shall be ever near, and while she leans on me 

This burden shall be mine, not hers.' 

So shall I keep my child within the circling arms 
Of my own love. Here lay it down, nor fear 
To impose it on a shoulder which upholds 
The government of worlds. Yet closer come : 
Thou art not near enough. I would embrace thy care. 
So I might feel my child reposing on my breast. 
Thou lovest me! I know it! Doubt not, then; 
But, loving me, lean hard /" 

And this beautiful interpretation of "The love of 
God," in "Saxe Holm," though it makes me feel like 
crying, as I read, leaves me more calm and quiet at 
the end. It is a great thought that we who are 
mothers — bereaved mothers — may understand, better 
than others, the cost of that divine sacrifice which 
gave to the world a Savior. 



24 OUT OF DARKNESS INTO LIGHT. 

"Like a cradle, rocking, rocking, 

Silent, peaceful, to and fro. 
Like a mother's sweet-looks dropping 

On the little face below, 
Hangs the green Earth, swinging, turning, 

Jarless, noiseless, safe and slow, 
Falls the light of God's face, bending 

Down, and watching us below. 

And as feeble babes that suffer. 

Toss and cry and will not rest, 
Are the ones the tender mother 

Holds the closest, loves the best : 
So, when we are weak and wretched. 

By our sins weighed down, distressed, 
Then it is that God's great patience 

Holds us closest, loyes us best. 

Oh! great heart of God! whose loving 

Cannot hindered be nor crossed, 
Will not weary, will not even 

In our death itself be lost; 
Love divine ! of such great loving 

Only mothers know the cost, — 
Cost of love, which all love passing, 

Gave a son to save the lost." 

April 29, — We go out a little sometimes, now, — 
Llewen, Lizzie, Daisy and I. It lias been good for 
me, doubtless, though I could not have mustered 
courage for it but for Lizzie's sake. She has many 
warm friends here and I would not have her miss the 
pleasure of seeing them. 

With the hurry and bustle of the morning's 
work, the getting ready and taking care of the things 
to be left, we somehow manage the going away; but 
the coming back ! oh, the coming back ! 

Riding in the dusk, over the familiar stretch of 
prairie toward our little home, and thinking of her 
who used always, when not with us, to run out to 



LOOKING TOWARD THE LIGHT. 25 

meet us with such eager feet, the gladness shining in 
her eyes, — we approach the gate where now there is 
no one to welcome us ; we drive slowly in, the car- 
riage sounding as it did upon the drive of the 
cemetery, when we laid dear Ruby away; we go in, — 
the dreadful sense of something wanting almost 
smothering us ; we sit down, sad and silent, scarcely 
daring to look into each other's eyes ! 

Hoiv long, O Lord, how long can we bear this ^ 
Talking with Mrs. G., whom we visited to-day, 
and who lost her own little daughter — an only child 
— many years ago, I asked her, with a vague sort of 
hope that her experience might be something com- 
forting, ''How long must this last ? — this dreadful 
sense of depression that we cannot shake off — this 
irrepressible longing for the sweetness and beauty 
which is lost forever out of our lives ?" 

Alas ! what a sad picture she drew for me, on 
the somber back-ground of her own desolate years ! 
This is what she said : ''You ivill never get over itT^ 
And yet her's does not seem to be an unhappy life. 
It surely is not a selfish one. She has taken the 
children of others to her heart and home, bringing 
them to a good and noble womanhood. She is 
upborne by high resolve and earnest faith. 

"And evermore, 
Prayer from a living source ivithin the will, 
And beating up through all the bitter world, 
Like fountains of sweet water in the sea," 

Keeps her ''a living soul." 

Lizzie is to leave us soon; — we shall seem more 



26 OUT OF DARKNESS IKTO LIGHT. 

bereft than ever. Like a gleam of sunshine in a 
dark place, — like a strong, refreshing breeze on a 
stifling snmnier clay, has her presence been to us, in 
this time of sorest need. And she has been such a 
comforter to poor, lonely little Daisy; — helping to 
divert her mind, preparing the many colored rags 
for the rug she is making, going out with her occa- 
sionally to see her numerous little pets — her calves 
and chickens and pigs ^deftly fashioning some 
dainty little garment for her, telling a story mean- 
while, and sometimes taking her for a walk or a ride* 
Poor Daisy ! My heart is so heavy it cannot 
leap at the call of her voice or the troubled cr^ from 
her lips, as it used to do. I weep for her, though ; — 
it is such a sad little voice now, and they are such, 
poor, wan little lips! — for she, too, is a mourner; 
never was a sincerer one, though she does not cry 
not utter a word of complaint. Oh ! I must try to 
lift myself up, that I may console and bless her; 
albeit she is braver than I. 

April 30. — I have arisen early this morning, — I 
usually rise early, now, it saves me a little of the 
torture of thinking. 

It seems enough that thought should hold us in 
its merciless grasp, during the night-time, when we 
cannot get away from it, when there is neither sight 
nor sound to beguile it into a moment of forgetful- 
ness. 

No pen could describe the feeling of utter weak- 
ness, desolation and hopelessness with which I go 



LOOKING TO^VARD THE LIGHT. 21 

out to meet the day. Bat it is better to face an nn- 
propitious dawn, even with a cowardly heart, like 
mine, than to lie in bed and think, as poor Llewen 
does. Oh ! how my heart aches for him, too ! 

This morning is even darker and more gloomy 
than the rest. The sun seems so slow to rise ; the 
clouds lower in the west ; the chilly winds bite 
through my clothing, and send convulsive little 
shivers through my frame; the air is oppressive; 
there is a portent of a storm. 

And within the house, there is a mournful wail- 
ing of the wind through the key-holes — a low 
moaning and sighing which seems a fit accompani- 
ment for the ''groanings of the spirit which cannot 
be uttered." And, altogether, if it be possible, 
everything seems duller and colder and harder and 
darker than before. Lizzie is gone ! 

Evening. — I was washing, this afternoon, that 
somebody would come, or that something would 
happen, when a letter was brought me from Aunt 
Lydia. I opened it eagerly, and out fluttered two 
pretty little colored leaflets, one of which, entitled 
^'Bereavement," from "Exotics," seemed as if she 
might have written it expressly for me. 

Here it is, minus the delicate, tinted paper and 
the small, clear type. 

"Shall time, then, bring no end 
To your sorrows, oh my friend, 
As you journey on your way? 
And your bitterness of ^rief 
Find no comfort, no relief, 
But grow deeper, day by day? 



28 OUT OF DARKNESS INTO LIGHT. 

Shall it thus confuse your mind 

Till no outlet you can find 

From a labyrinth of woe; 

That your daughter sleeps in peace, 

Where earthly trials cease, 

And where we all must ^o? 

If, in answer to your prayer, 

She had gone with snowy hair 

And bent with age, above, 

Would the angels come to meet her, 

With welcome any sweeter 

Than their present tones of love? 

It is Nature's law, I know. 
That when our darlings go. 
Such tears should blind our eyes; 
But because their life has gone, 
To cast away our own 
Is neither we]l nor wise. 

Your grief may smite the sky. 
No echo shall reply ! 
Your stormy grief is vain ! 
To will what God doth will, 
Is for us the only skill 
To cure this bitter pain." 

All ! this is the great secret, this is the wonderfal 
panacea for mortal ills, — *'to will what God doth 
will." Then it must follow as doth the night, the 
day, that we can truly say "thy will be done." 
Then we can understand what this meaneth, "- It is 
the Lord; let him do what seemeth good to him ;" 
and this, ''The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken 
away ; blessed be the name of the Lord !" 

May 15. 

"God's ways seem dark, but soon or late, 
They touch the shining hills of day; 
The evil cannot brook delay, 

The good can well afford to wait." 



LOOKING TOWARD THE LIGHT. 29 

Alas ! I fear there are many of us who will have to 
wait a long time before we can see clearly how all 
the ways of God, so dark to ns, ''touch the shining 
hills of day." 

There may be, I believe there are, some rare, 
sweet souls, so perfectly attuned to heavenly har- 
monies, while yet enthralled in earthly bondage, so 
perfectly in sympathy with the will and plans of 
God, that they respond with serenity, if not with 
joy, when he calls for the precious jewels committed 
to their care. Loving God best, alwaj^s, they love 
everything else subject to the love and will of God. 
To such souls submission and resignation come as 
naturally and as sweetly as strength and grace to the 
wind swej)t trees, and ripeness to the sun kissed 
fruit. They do not need to wait, like others, through 
years of patient struggling toward the light, learn- 
ing, little by little, the lessons of faith and trust ; 
resigning, one by one, at fearful cost of tears and 
pain, the cherished idols of the heart, and so coming 
to understand, at last, w^hat resignation means. 

But, whether born of such rare sweetness of 
spirit, or attained through the struggle and pain of 
years, true resignation must bring us very near to 
the heart of God and the gate of Heaven. 

"Depend upon it," says George MacDonald, "in 
the midst of all the science about the world and its 
ways, and all the ignorance of God and his great- 
ness, the man or woman who can say, 'thy will be 
done,' with the true spirit of giving up, is nearer the 
secret of things, than the geologist and theologian." 



30 OUT OF DARKNESS INTO LIGHT. 

As for rae, I tear that I must wait long for the 
peace which I am now seeking, and for which I also 
hope, though tremblingly, since I am assured that 
those who seek shall find. The beautiful promise, 
'^I will give you rest," must have been meant for 
such weary, over-burdened souls as mine, if they will 
but come to him. O Savior ! I am trying to come ! I 
am longing for rest ! 

Eoening. — I have a letter announcing the death 
of Tommy B. whose mother was once a beloved 
teacher of mine. He was a boy of unusual promise 
— was nearly through the High School and about 

to enter the Polytechnic School at T . He was 

full of eager hopes and high aspirations, which 
seemed justified by his studious habits and excellent 
attainments, thus far. He was besides an affection- 
ate and obedient son, with pleasant manners and win- 
ning ways. I remember when I was last at his 
father's house, while he was still quite young, how 
interested he was in the decoration of his mother's 
sitting-room ; — what beautiful ornaments, carved 
with a knife and fashioned with taste and skill, he 
had placed upon the wall ; and I still have in my 
possession a tiny bit of wood of a curious shape and 
very neatly wrought, which I have kept as a memen- 
to of him, and which will be treasured more sacredly 
than ever, now. It was to show me the constituent 
parts of a pretty picture-frame, which I had much 
admired, that he gave me this bit of wood. The 
frame was a sort of a puzzle to a novice, being made 
of numberless such little pieces, ingeniously locked 



LOOKING TOWARD THE LIGHT. 31 

or fitted together in a sort of endless chain, strong 
and durable, with no help from tacks or brads or 
glne. I have often thought of Tommy's curious 
picture-frame, but have never seen anything like it 
since. 

What must the loss of such a son have been to 
to tbe fond and doting parents ! They are incon- 
solable ; they feel that they cannot give him up ; — he 
was so much to them he was to have been so much 
more ! All the dear, sweet hopes, the great expecta- 
tions which were woven into the finest fibres of their 
being, were rudely snapped asunder by the ruthless 
hand of Death, and they are left with torn and 
bleeding hearts, and anguish unutterable. Ah ! hoAv 
sadly e'en the devoutest soul to the eternal purpose 
yields its dear, long-cherished plans! — how hardly 
merges its own will into the will divine, and feels it 
best that all its earthly hopes should die, if God di- 
rect! We have our little world, peopled with charm- 
ing fancies, and with visions bright of what may be ; 
and oft, forgetful that the universe is God's, and all 
its myriad creatures His, we crave His favor for our- 
selves, His blessing on our world as though 'twere 
all in all! and flatter ourselves that He will hear, 
since he is good and we are His ! 

But oh ! 'tis oft a sad awakening, when, sudden- 
ly the clear truth dawns upon our selfish souls, and 
we perceive how great the scheme of universal good, 
how small our individual claim ! How vast the final 
ends, subserved by human means in which we sim- 
ply bear the part assigned us, as humble instruments ! 



32 OUT OF DARKNESS INTO LIGHT. 

Yet do til the Infinite Jehovah recognize in each 
of ns a child beloved, and oft as may be, like a ten- 
der father doth He give us what we wish, rekictant 
to withhold, save when His wisdom sees it best for 
us, and loving still the child to whom He most de- 
nies of present joy ! 

June 12. — It is almost a month, I see, since 
the last date, and as I turn the leaves over and note 
what has been written here, I find myself wondering 
why I never have anything to record save my 
thoughts ; do I never do anything ? Not anything 
to speak of, surely; my best attempts at doing would 
look very insignificant if put down in black and 
Vfhite; — being a housekeeper, my time is necessarily 
occupied with those manifold lUile duties which 
seem, in themselves, so petty and so commonplace 
that one is sometimes almost disgusted with them, 
and out of patience at their continual recurrence. 

Yet, as the aggregate of these little duties, if 
properly done, secures the comfort and well-being of 
the family, and the happiness and permanence of 
the liome, they must not be regarded as an unimport- 
ant part of our life-work. These little, troublesome 
duties are, moreover, tests of our patience and 
strength ; — they are the little stones which help to 
build the grand superstructure of character. And 
will not the great Master-Builder be best pleased 
with the workman who places even the least of these 
with unswerving fidelity? ''He that is faithful in 
the least, is faithful also in much." 



LOOKING TOWARD THE LIGHT. 33 

I was reading lately, in a description of the 
great Milan Cathedral, that every one of the little 
figures crowded into the numerous niches of its wil- 
derness of spires, is as perfectly wrought and as 
beautifully finished as if intended for exhibition in a 
gallery of statuary! What a lesson is this to us who 
are trying to build a perfect Christian character, to 
do all those little things which are hidden away from 
the sight of men, with the same exactness and pre- 
cision, — the same faithfulness to Him in whose 
service we are employed, which we would be desir- 
ous of showing in our outward or public life. 

''In quiet fidelity to daily duty," says Mr. 
Merriam, ''lies the only sure hope of reaching a high 
spiritual state. The conscious communion with God, 
the abiding presence of joyful love, to which the 
soul aspires, as its highest delight, is to be reached 
only through patient continuance in well doing. 
Brief and hectic ecstasy may spring up in a life that 
is wayward and fitful, but the peace which 'passeth 
understanding' can be hoped for only by him who is 
content to be true to duty, day by day and hour by 
hour, seeking only to do his whole work, honestly 
and well." 

This truly is a very comforting view of the mat- 
ter, for all humble and lowly workers; — and how it 
dignifies and ennobles even the most menial ( ?) em- 
ployment which may fall to our lot in life ! 

It may not be our lot to wield 
The sickle in the ripened field; 
Nor ours to hear on summer eves 
The reaper's song among the sheaves. 



34 OUT OF DARKNESS INTO LIGHT. 

Yet, where our duty's task is wrought 
In unison with God's great thought, 
The near and future blend in one. 
And whatsoe'er is willed, is done. 

And ours the grateful service whence 
Come, day by day, the recompense; 
The hope, the trust, the purpose stayed. 
The fountain and the noonday shade. 

And were this life the utmost span, 
The only end and aim of man. 
Better the toil of fields like these 
Than waking dreams and slothful ease. 

— Whittier. 

Minnie Norman has just come to make Daisy a 
little visit ; they have gone out to gather roses for a 
"bouquet for mamma." Daisy has kept me in bou- 
quets of wild flowers all the spring, and now that the 
roses have come she is quite delighted, they seem so 
much nicer than violets and apple-blossoms. Poor, 
dear little Daisy ! I am glad to see her taking heart 
again, and amusing herself as best she can, though I 
often wonder, as I look on, with my eyes half blinded 
with tears, how she can play the same old plays, by 
herself, and do the same things, over and over, alone, 
that she and Ruby were wont to do, together. Oh ! 
fhe blessedness of being a child, the comfort of 
being able to cast awa^. care, to forget, sometimes, or 
rather to be able to remember without a pang ; for I 
know that she does remember ! Yet, she is some- 
times quite her old self again, lively and happy. 

She came into the hoase, one day, perhaps two 
or three weeks ago, much elated with a new and won- 
derful accomplishment. ''Papa," she said, ''had 
taught her the Latin names of the animals," where- 



LOOKING TOWARD THE LIGHT, 36 

upon she proceeded to tell us with great satisfaction, 
what cat and dog and cow and horse, etc., are in 
good old Roman. I took but little notice of it, ex- 
cept to commend the ^correctness of her rendering of 
the names, and supposed she would soon forget them 
all. But this morning when she went out to feed 
the cat and dog, I overheard her exclaiming in a tone 
of severe reproach, ''Cants, you scoundrel! You 
must let Felis eat ! She's got to have something to 
keep soul and body together!" 

Last evening, I read to her that exquisite poem 
of Longfellow's, "The Legend Beautiful," — the 
vision of the monk in his cell ; after which, I tried to 
tell her how the monks live, — what a monastery is, 
and the specific difference between it and a nunnery. 
She listened attentively, looking very thoughtful, but 
remained silent. After a while, she said, ''Mamma, 
if the place where the nuns live is called a nunnery, 
why is not the place where monks live called a 
monkery f 

Looking toward the light, though it may not, all cd 
once, illumine the soul, makes one more hopeful, 
more patient, more submissive. It helps us to see 
the hand of God, where we felt only the crushing 
burden of pain, — and to recognize a providential care 
in what seems to us the bitter mockery of fate. 

Thou, O Most Compassionate! 
Who didst stoop to our estate, 
Drinking of the cup we drain, 
Treading in our path of pain, — 



36 OUT OF DARKNESS INTO LIGHT. 



Through the doubt and mystery, 
Grant to us thy steps to see, 
And the grace to draw from thence 
Larger hope and confidence. 

Show thy vacant tomb, and let. 
As of old, the angels sit, 
Whispering by its open door: 
''Fear not! He hath gone before! " 

— Whittier. 



III. 

DO WE LIVE AGAIN? 

June 18. — Frances Power Cobbe, in "The Peak 
in Darien" has an ingenious Allegory illustrative of 
immortality, which I have read, over and over, my 
hungry soul finding sweet satisfaction in its quaintly 
beautiful teachings; my mind has been filled so much 
of late with restless questionings, in regard to the 
future life! Why so much? Why should I, who 
have always believed in immortality need now to be 
assured and reassured? 1 do not know, indeed, un- 
less it be that while I was happy and satisfied, with 
all my trea'feures about me, and while this life seemed 
so full of interest and beauty and promise, I believed 
with my mind, in a future which seemed so far, oh! 
so very far aicay! Now that every thing has seemed 
to slip from my grasp, and the sweet dreams of the 
past have proved to be only dreams, I must believe 
ivith my whole heart! 

The future can no longer be a shadowy myth to 
me ; it must be a near, a living reality, within reach 
of my straining vision, aye, within reach of my out- 
stretched arms, that I may see and feel my precious 
child, from whom I cannot be separated. Faith in 
the hereafter, to me, must henceforward be part and 
parcel of the living consciousness. 

''Ages ago two men, Wolfgang and Athelstane, 
undertook a long journey together on foot. One 



38 OUT OF DARKNESS INTO LIGHT. 

morning, in the early dawn, tliey came upon a 
curious structure, unlike anything they had ever 
seen. It surely was a building ingeniously con- 
trived and strongly built, and much lar^fer than 
their own humble cabins of w^attled willow and turf ; 
but, if intended for a dwelling, why this thin wedge, 
like a reversed roof, instead of a firm foundation ? 
and why these two long, slender erections, with cross- 
bars and ropes connecting them, and this great roll 
of coarse woven stuff, lying folded beside them ? 
Was it a house ? or, if a house, was it only a house? 
After examining the interior and finding seats, beds, 
tables and cooking utensils, Wolfgang stoutly main- 
tained that it was a house and OJily a house ; while 
Athelstane, thoughtfully looking over the whole 
structure, inside and out, and noting all the evi- 
dences of design in the work, and of the great skill 
and wisdom of the Architect, was as certain in his 
own mind that it was noi simply a house ; though it 
was impossible for him to conjecture what more it 
could be. He stood before it humbly, as before a 
great mystery : yet, great as the mystery w^as, he 
decided this much, that the insecurity of the founda- 
tion, and Hhe vast, guiding beam at the back,' 
showed plainly that it was not intended to stand 
always where it was, though where it was to go, or 
why it should be moved, he had no idea. While the 
travellers stood, wondering, and conversing earnestly 
together, the sun rose, the sound of many waters 
came to their ears, and, looking through an opening 
in the rocks, they beheld the great ocean which they 



BO WE LIVE AGAIN f 39 



had never seen before ; and, as the tide rose, and 
they retreated before it, awe-struck and breathless, 
they could see that the strange wooden building 
would soon float upon the water, which had now al-» 
most reached it. 

"Directly, a company of men ran down from the 
cliff above, leaped on board the vessel, hauled in the 
anchor, set the sails, and when the waves lifted up 
the vessel, she floated away, and was borne by the 
winds of Heaven, far 'beyond the uttermost ken of 
the two poor travellers upon the shore.' 

''Then, as the new-risen sun smote his face with 
glory, Athelstane spoke to his friend as that friend 
had never heard him speak before ; — as one in whose 
soul a great, new thought had sprung to life. He 
said : ' If that marvellous work of human hands was 
not made for earth alone, do you think that we were 
made for nothing better than the life which we now 
lead — to eat and drink, and marry and toil, and 
sleep and die and be forgotten ? Are not we, too, O 
Wolfgang, made for other things than these ? Are 
we not fitted for some other element than that in 
which we now have our being — for some other exist- 
ence than this ? If we were intended only to live 
our few years of animal life on earth and then per- 
ish, why were we given minds to plough the seas of 
thought, and aspirations to point to Heaven, and love 
to swell beneath the breath of affection, and con- 
science to guide us on our way, as the pilot lays on 
his mighty hand ? O Wolfgang ! We could per- 



40 OUT OF DARKNESS INTO LIGHT. 

ceive tliat the ship was intended to float on the great 
ocean which we had never beheld. Can we not see 
that we and all onr race are made to live in a world 
•yet unseen — wider, freer, grander, a thousand times 
than Earth, — a world which we shall enter whenso- 
ever the tide of death shall lift us up and bear us 
away ?' 



r)5 ?5 



June 19. — Yesterday while looking over the pa- 
pers just from the ofiice (we go but seldom and so 
have a pile of them), I stumbled upon something 
which Miss Martineau said of "immortality," which 
impressed me the more strongly as I remembered 
that she had been credited with disbelief in immor- 
tality. 

Thinking about it afterward, and trying to recall 
the exact words, I betook myself again to the papers 
and made a thorough search for the passage, but in 
vain. Trusting to my memory, it was substantially 
as follows: "It is safe to conclude that a thing so uni- 
versally desired by man as immortality^, will not be 
denied him." 

Truly, God must have implanted in the human 
soul this irrepressible yearning for something better 
and more, — something that shall survive the wreck 
of worlds, and triumph gloriously over all the muta- 
tions of time. And could he have made this desire 
in man so universal, could he permit it to grow and 
expand in the hearts of those who love him, until 
all other desires are swallowed up in it, but to disap- 
point it, cruelly, at last ? Impossible ! 



DO WE LIVE AGAIN 9 41 

"I think if we must cease to be, 
It is a cruelty refined, 
To make the instincts of our mind 

Stretch out towards eternity. 

Wherefore, I welcome Nature's cry 
As earnest of a life a^ain 
Where thought shall never be in vain. 

And doubt before the light shall fly." 

It really does seem that the evidence of uni- 
versal instincts should be regarded as higher and 
more conclusive than all the proofs of logic ; and that 
the best ''argument" for immortality is a good and 
noble soul, full of earnest aspirations toward holi- 
ness and Heaven, living in an atmosphere of purity 
and truth, and wrapping itself about with deeds of 
sweetest charity toward all. When the mortal re- 
mains of such a one are committed to the earth, 
"dust to dust" are we not satisfied ? Do we seek ev- 
idence or proof that he lives whose attributes are 
immortal and whose affections aud hopes forever 
reached out toward the infinite beyond? 

'^There is an instinct in human nature," says 
Rev. Dr. Storrs, ''which prepares us for the recep- 
tion of the truth announced to us in the gospel, that 
we are associated with vast and glorious realms 
of life which eye hath not yet seen and of which 
there comes to us no whisper through the silent 
blue, yet, with which our relations are vital and inti- 
mate, into which we are to pass at death, and in 

which we are to dwell, thenceforth, immortally 

There is a sense, more or less deep, in every people, 
in every person, we may say, of a relation to a life 
beyond the present." 



42 OUT OF DARKNESS INTO LIGHT. 

"We belong to a higher place'' says Jean Paul 
Kichter, "and therefore an eternal longing con- 
sumes us, and every music is our soul's Swiss 'ranz 
des vaches.' " 

"Who can bear," says Dr. Hedge, "the thought 
of eternal night ? Who so surfeited with day, as to 
face without a pang the idea of sinking down, down 
into endless darkness and dreamless sleep? To the 
wish for day all hearts respond ; in the universality 
of that wish lies a presage of immortality'' 

And the Apostle Paul must have had in mind the 
same instinctive longing for a better life, strength- 
ened through the manifestation of Christ into an 
inward confidence, little short of positive knowledge, 
when he said, "Kiioicing in yourselves that ye have 
in Heaven a better and an enduring substance. 
Cast not away, therefore, your confidence which hath 
great recompense of reward." 

We have also an instinctive feeling, quite dis- 
tinct from this yearning of the individual soul for its 
own perpetuity, — a feeling that God, being what he is, 
could never never have created us as we are for this 
life alone. It is impossible to conceive that a Being 
of Infinite Wisdom could have made so grand a 
thing as a human soul, endowing it with such won- 
derful capacities and powers, among which is the 
capacity of loving and adoring him, and made all 
these powers susceptible of unlimited growth and 
development, to live only through this pitiful little 
earth-life, so brief it is but a span, so full of toil and 
pain, repression and wrong, that, were it all, it could 



DO WE LIVE AGAIN f 43 

only be a dreadful disappointment to the soul. 
"None but a lunatic," says Mr. Dall, "would bring 
down a hammer upon a gold watcli, his best produc- 
tion as a workman, just as he had got it ready for 
use. Man's Creator is no lunatic." 

"The rudest workman would not fling 

The fragments of his work away, 

If every useless bit of clay 
He trod on, were a sentient thing. 

And more, if but creation's waste. 

Would he have given us sense to yearn 
For the perfection none can earn, 

And hope the fuller life to taste?" 

I do not, by any means, ignore or undervalue the 
proofs of immortality so commonly adduced. On 
the contrary, I regard them as highly important and 
valuable. The arguments from Nature are especially 
convincing and consoling and worthy of a large 
place in our thoughts. 

But the evidence of universal instincts seems, 
nevertheless, to be the all-embracing, the universal 
evidence, — as pervasive and far-reaching as thought, 
— confined to no nation or age or condition of men. 
Long before the introduction of Christianity into 
the world, belief in immortality was the "common 
inheritance" of man. The conception of the im- 
mortal state was necessarily rude and gross, ac- 
cording to the rudeness and grossness of the times, 
but it was strong and decided. The Slavons 
conceived Heaven to be situated in an immense 
apple-orchard, entrance to which was to be se- 
cured by climbing the sides of a glass mountain. 



44 OUT OF DARKNESS INTO LIGHT. 

So confident were the ancient Drnicls of future hap- 
piness, and so attractive was the Heaven they 
pictured to themselves, that it became customary 
among tiiem to weep on the occasion of the birth 
of a child into this world of sorrow, while they 
smiled at the coming of Death, as the guide to 
scenes of felicity in another life. The xlrabs were 
also firm believers in a future state, however crude 
or mistaken their ideas of the celestial country, may 
have been; and the Magians — fire-worshippers — had 
a real Paradise, lovely in their eyes, to which they 
looked forward with joyful anticipations. 

And so, on down to the American Indian, who, 
while as yet no revelation had come to him, had his 
beautiful ideal of fairer hunting grounds beyond, 
which might be shared by his beloved and faithful 
dog, and into which he might carry his hunter's 
trappings and his trophies of war. 

But, blessed be God, w^ho has not left us with- 
out higher proofs of our immortal destiny, than even 
that which is furnished by our inner consciousness. 
He has given us his Son, Jesus Christ, through 
whose life and death are revealed in clearer light, 
the glory and beauty of that other life. To his 
disciples Christ said, with that inimitable touch of 
pathos, which the parting always lends to one's well- 
remembered last words, "In my Father's house are 
mansions, if it were not so I would have told you ; I 
go to prepare a place for you." "I will come again 
and receive you to myself that where I am, ye may 
be also." And to his Father he said, "I will that 



DO WE LIVE AGAIN. 45 

they also ^vliom thou hast given me, be with me 
where I am that they may behold my glory which 
thou hast given me." 

To the poor malefactor who was crucified by his 
side, and who suffered with him the pangs of disso- 
lution, he said, ''To-day thou shalt be with me in 
Paradise." He could see within, we must remember, 
and his answer came quickly to the repentant sor- 
row-stricken soul. 

"This," says Christ, "is life eternal that they 
might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus 
Christ whom thou hast sent." 

''Fear not, little flock, it is your Father's good 
pleasure to give you the kingdom." 

Christ has revealed to us the Father, loving, ten- 
der and compassionate, and taught us the way to 
become his loving and obedient children. To this 
sonship of ours, God has given the seal of his 
blessed spirit and made us feel anew, and w^ith 
deeper and fuller satisfaction, the inward witness of 
our heavenly destiny. 

"The spirit itself beareth witness with our 
spirit that we are the children of God, and if chil- 
dren, then heirs ; heirs of God and joint heirs with 
Christ." 

Heirs to w^hat? Heirs to "an inheritance which 
is incorruptible, undefiled and that fadeth not away." 

In St. Paul's notable argument for immortality, 
contained in the fifteenth chapter of Corinthians, an 
argument which has been said to bear the same rela- 
tion to the New Testament, which the "Phasdo" of 



46 OUT OF DARKNESS INTO LIGHT. 

Plato, and the ''Tusciilan Disx)utations " of Cicero, 
bear to the heathen philosophy, he says, ''If, in this 
life only, we have hope in Christ, we are of all men 
the most miserable." What stronger or more forci- 
ble expression could be desired of the faith of this 
great apostle in the life everlasting, and in the su- 
premacy of the happiness with which that life is to 
be crowned ! 

To have hope in Christ the Son for the life that 
is to come, must be also to have hope in God the 
Father, in whom Christ reposed such infinite faith 
and confidence, not only as His father, but as ours. 

"The greatest impulse yet given to belief in im- 
mortality," says James Freeman Clarke, ''has come 
from the divine trust of Jesus in God as the uni- 
versal Father, the father of the evil as well as of 
the good — whose sun shines and whose rain falls on 
the grateful and on the unthankful. This relation of 
the father to the child, is a tie that death may not 
sever. It goes below all distinction of character, of 
capacity, of worth. The father and mother do not 
love their child because it is full of power and prom- 
ise, full of affection and goodness, hut because it is 
their child.'" 

Oh ! what a great thought ; — what a comforting 
thought is this ! He who is our Father, here, our 
Father who loves us, even in our weakness and sin- 
fulness, — who pities us, "like as a father pitieth his 
children," — He, the Everlasting, the Unchangeable, 
cannot cease to love us, cannot cease to pity us when 
our earthly life is over. 



DO WE LIVE AGAIN? 41 

Oh ! need I fear to trust my Ruby to that un- 
changing love, though I see her face no more? I am 
sure that she lives, and that God, who gave her life, 
will sustain and bless her, forever. Sitting here 
with the evening shadows gathering about me, and a 
painful stillness in the room, which I know her sweet 
voice will never break again, I struggle with the 
mortal yearning in my heart, and try, once more, to 
give her up to God and her new, immortal life. 

But still I wait with ear and eye 

For something gone, which should be nigh, 

A loss in all familiar things, — 

In flower that blooms, and bird that sings. 

And yet, dear heart! remembering thee, 

Am I not richer than of old ? 

Safe in thy immortality. 

What change can reach the wealth I hold? 

What chance can mar the pearl and gold 

Thy love hath left in trust with me? 

And while, in life's late afternoon, 

Where cool and long the shadows grow, 

I walk to meet the night that soon 

Shall shape and shadow overflow, 

I cannot feel that thou art far. 

Since near, at need, the angels are; 

And when the sunset gates unbar, 

Shall I not see thee waiting stand. 

And, white against the evening star, 

The welcome of thy beckoning hand? 

— Whittier, 



IV. 
WE DO NOT DIE ; 

DEATH IS BUT A CHANGE IN THE CONDITION OF OUR 

BEING. 

June 20. — This morning, while very busy with 
my household duties, I was surprised by the coming 
of our pastor, Bev. Mr. Ward, and his wife. They 
made a short stay, but it would have done us good 
just to see their faces, — faces that, as yet, show no 
traces of sorrow or pain. 

As I looked at them I could not repress a wish 
that I might, somehow, shield them from the inevita- 
ble trials which the future must have in store for 
them. And I fell to wondering whether the exper- 
ience of sorrow would make him a better pastor or a 
more earnest preacher, if indeed it could! — We who 
listen to his ministrations from week to week, do not 
feel that he needs to be thus tried. Though still 
quite young, his life and character remind me of 
Hawthorne's picture of a preacher. ''His words 
had power because they accorded with his thoughts ; 
and his thoughts had reality and depth, because they 
harmonized with the life which he lived. It was not 
mere breath that this preacher uttered : they were 
the words of life, because a life of good deeds and 
holy love was melted into them. Pearls, pure and 
rich, had been dissolved into the precious draught." 



WE DO NOT DIE. 49 



How very lilxe this, in substance, is what Margaret 
Sidney says of Charles Kingsley, ''Good and true 
and strong were his words, because good and true and 
strong had been the life before them. The man 
breathed back of the poem and sermon and 
story." 

But what I particularly wished to make note of 
here, is the fact that he brought us, according to 
previous promise, a copy of the sermon which he 
preached on the occasion of Ruby's burial. I 
have been reading and re-reading it, over and over, 
since they went away, and I am compelled to own 
that the many comforting assurances, the beautiful 
and hopeful utterances, which it contains, were lost 
upon me when I first listened to them. I was not 
then in a condition to understand or apply them, and 
they come to me now with fresh meaning and interest. 
They have set my thoughts to running in a new chan- 
nel. 

What impresses most is the confidence with 
which he expresses the belief that deaih is but a 
change in ilie condiiion of our being, — in the associa- 
tions and environments of our life. I must make a 
short extract from this portion of his sermon. He 
says: "God takes little account of what we call death. 
That alone is death which severs the soul from him- 
self, and destroys its living quality by ruining its 
power to be good like himself. To the Divine eye, 
life on this side and on that side the grave, is one un- 
broken whole; and what is death to us, is to him but 
the disrobing of the spirit for its future home, — the 



50 OUT OF DARKNESS INTO LIGHT. 

putting off of that wliicli was, at the best, only the 
soul's garment, — the escape from what icas its tene- 
ment. 

''This deep and, from oui side impenetrable mist, 
which all must enter, sooner or later, is nothing to 
him but a thin veil, and the entering into it, a mere 
episode or incident in life. 

''We are apt to count the life in the tenement ev- 
erything, and to think when its plans are interrupted 
that some great misfortune has befallen us. But to 
God there are no sleeping forms in the earth ; there 
is no interruption of life ; physical death is but a 
a change from one realm of life to another, and to 
the good and true of heart, a higher and better one. 
For such, it is but going to 'behold the face of the 
Father' forever, where every beautiful thing of hu- 
man character, shall develop into more than earthly 
beauty, and every pure quality be safe forever, from 
all taint of earthly impurity. 

"We all know" the dreadful possibility of danger 
to children as they begin to near manhood and wom- 
anhood; danger into which they have often come, 
before the most tender watchfulness can detect it. 
God has seen fit to allow the blight of our nature to 
fall upon your child's earthly form, and she is re- 
moved from these dangers. I do not pretend that 
this is any compensation for your loss ; but, perhaps, 
it may mitigate your pain to know that your kind 
care will be replaced by a kinder care ; and your solic- 
itude for the future may be exchanged for the hope 
and faith that sometime you will see her again, with 



WE DO NOT DIE, 51 

every good and noble quality strengthened and de- 
veloped beyond yonr fondest anticipations. 

"Let us try to get hold of Gcd's thought of these 
things, and look at them as He does, and many of 
the unscrutable ways of his dealings with us, will be 
illumined, if not made perfectly plain, As to God 
there is no death, let there be none to you, but, in- 
stead, a hope which looks after the fleeting spirit 
into the home beyond." 

I hope to find time for the further study of this 
subject. 1 am in need of all the comfort to be de- 
rived from such a hopeful view of it ; though it is 
not easy, perhaps, for any of us to dismiss at once 
the dread and fear of death so common to all, or re- 
press our shuddering sense of dismay and terror at 
the approach of him "who bears our best loved 
things away," beyond our sight, beyond recall. 

June 25. — What a tribute it is to the wonderful 
power of thought that so many different minds 
arrive at the same conclusions, in their deep think- 
ing upon the great and deep things of God ! 

Or is it, rather a tribute to the love and sympa- 
thy of God, that he opens to the comprehension of 
genuine seekers for truth, these same deep things, — 
that he manifests himself and his truth, through his 
blessed spirit, to the souls that wait on him, in a 
manner to leave no room for doubt ? 

My reading and study on the subject alluded to 
under date of June 20, though it has necessarily 
been of a fragmentary and desultory character, has 
nevertheless, shown that our pastor is not alone in 



52 OUT OF DARKJS^ESS INTO LIGHT. 

his views concerning the change wrought by death. 
Indeed, it seems quite remarkable how^ much I find 
to substantiate those views, and how nearly in the 
same channel the minds of various writers on this 
subject, seem to have run. 

Some pious sayings of Zschokke indicate clearly 
his belief that "life on this side and on that side the 
grave, is one unbroken whole," not only "to God," 
but, in reality, to us. He says: "Time and eternity 
are the same to God, but they are likew^ise so to me. 
Why make this distinction ? There is but one eier- 
nal. After death, I shall be in eternity ; but I am 
already in it. After death, I shall be with God ; but 
here below, already, I live and move and have my 
being loith God, . . .The loved ones, whose loss I la- 
ment, are, like myself, dwelling in the great, paternal 
mansion of God. They still belong to me as I to 
them. We are not separated, for I, like them, dwell 
in eternity, rest in the arms of God." 

Somebody, I do not know who, has also written 
this little stanza, which seems almost like an echo of 
Zschokke : 

"There is no end to the sky, 

And the stars are everywhere 
And time is eternity, 

And the here is over there." 

"If, between the Heavenly Father and the earth- 
ly child," says Dr. Ellis, "there is a life-long com- 
munion, surely it will be a companionship so inward 
and spiritual, that death can have no power over it. 
As the things which are in part, and only half real, 
vanish away, that which is perfect, and which we 



WE DO NOT DIE. 53 

have ever sought to make more real, shall come ; and 
the faiths of this life shall be the visions of the life 
to come." 

Surely, what could be more natural than that a 
life which is "hid with Christ in God," needs but to 
drop this cumbrous body, to be at home in the world 
of spirits ? 

"It shall be in him a well of water, springing 
up into everlasting life," said our Savior to the wom- 
an of Samaria, and his words meant more than she 
knew. 

Said Mr. Robertson, speaking of one who should 
live that kind of active life which realizes Christ, 
"When such a man comes near the opening of the 
vault, it is no world of sorrows he is entering upon. 
He is only going to see things that he has felt, for he 
has been living in Heaven. He has his grasp on 
things that other men are only groping after and 
touching now and then. . . .'Thanks be to God, w^hich' 
not shall give, but which 'giveth us the victory 
through our Lord Jesus Christ.' " 

And I find this beautiful passage from an un- 
known author: 

"And thou, O heavy and fa>].tering seeker after a 
true life! lift up thy head. The heights before thee 
are steep, but they have been tracked by the feet of 
old saints and divine heroes. Their summits are 
eternally effulgent ; and when night lowers upon thy 
path, angel watchers are there, ascending and de- 
scending. And thou, whose lot it is no more to act, 
but only to suffer, even thy life may be sublimely 



54: OUT OF DARKNESS INTO LIGHT. 

real. The struggle with pain, the weary days and 
nights of confinement and languishing, the battle 
with agony and death, — what an occasion hast thou 
in these, for the exercise of the noblest virtues, — pa- 
tience, trust, brave resolution, self -conquest, and the 
victory over the grave ! Thou art living sublimely 
even in thus dying daily. Struggle on, meekly, but 
manfully. Death is hid a iransient incident in thy 
life! The eternal future is still before thee. Lift 
up thy head and rejoice!" 

Says Miss Muloch of one of her noblest charac- 
ters, who was nearing the close of this earthly life, 
" He spoke as one would speak of a new abode, an 
impending journey. To him, the great change, the 
last terror of humanity, was a thought, solemn in- 
deed, but long familiar and altogether without fear. 
And as we sat there, something of his spirit passed 
into mine. I felt how narrow is the span between 
the life mortal >nd the life immortal,^ — how, in truth, 
both are one with God! 

"'Ay,' he said, 'that is exactly what I mean. To 
me there is something impious in the preparing for 
death that people talk about, as if we were not con- 
tinually, whether in the flesh or out of it, living in 
the Father's presence ; as if, come when he will, the 
Master should not find us all watching.' " 

This man had a strong conviction of immortality, 
because he had "lived for it," an abiding sense of the 
divine love and the divine presence, which made the 
question of worlds seem of very little consequence to 
the soul, so that it might dwell in that presence and 



WE DO NOT DIE. 



bask in the smisliine of that love. He was one of 
those to whom, m the language of Thomas Starr 
King, "the world becomes the veil of a brighter 
glory that lies behind it, and the condemnation of 
unbelief is lifted off, since the mind, conscious of its 
own noted being, does not loait for irnmortalUy, 'but 
is passed from death unto life.' " 

"Immortality should begin here," said Channing, 
''the seed is now to be sown, which is to expand for- 
ever." 

"Man enters Heaven in this world," says Mr. 
Dall, "or not at all. We who come together for 
good and as genuine truth-seekers, ive are in heaven. 
We have 'passed from death unto life,' — a life that 
is forever ours, if we fling it not away. AVe still have 
the body to escape from; we are yet to struggle out 
of it as a child from the womb." 

This is the voice of a man who has exiled him- 
self from his native land, from his kindred and his 
home, to work for God; — who has devoted his earthly 
life to patient labor among benighted souls in far 
away India. He feels, within himself, that wonder- 
ful spiritual development, which, ''going on unto per- 
fection,'' does not mind the trials by the way; — to 
use his own language, — that "continued on-going of 
Heaven-ward, God-ward growth of the heart's love, 
the soul's adoration, the mind's understanding, the 
will's beneficent power, — all normal forces of man — 
that come to merest budding and babyhood of prom- 
ise in this our first world." 

To die, then, is, in his view, simply to escape 



56 OUT OF DARKNESS INTO LIGHT. 

from tlie body, — to have all these powers and capaci- 
ties released from earthly imprisonment and brought 
into larger liberty and more perfect freedom of ac- 
tion, and hence into a region of grander achievement 
and nobler perfection. 

"Death, as we call it," says Stopford Brooke, 
"may touch our sensible vesture, but it is only a 
vesture which decays. Our being goes on in another 
life ; for we live in his life and our true world is not 
this world. 'We look for a city which hath founda- 
tions.' We abide in him and he in us, and he abides 
forever." 

"What soothes suffering," said Yictor Hugo, in 
his great speech on "Public Instruction," in 1850, 
"what sanctifies labor, what makes man good, strong, 
wise, patient, benevolent, just, and, at the same time, 
humble and great, worthy of liberty, is to have be- 
fore him ihe perpeiual vision of a better icorld, 
throwing its rays through the darkness of this life." 

On another occasion, he said, "I feel that I shall 
be complete only up yonder. That which later I 
shall speak, now I only stammer; I shall continue my 
being in sublimating it." 

And best of all, on his death-bed, he said, "Win- 
ter has settled on my head, but eternal spring is in 
my soul, where I breathe the odor of roses, lilies and 
violets, as I did at twenty. The more I approach the 
end, the more I listen to the immortal symphonies of 
the worlds that call me. It is wonderful and yet 
simple. It is a fairy tale, but it is a true story. For 
more than half a century, I have been writing my 



WELOJSOTLIE. 57 



thoughts in prose and verse, . . .but I feel that I have 
expressed only the thousandth part of what is in 
me. When I shall have lain down in the tomb, 
I may say, like so many others, I have finished 
my day's work. But I shall not say, I have fin- 
ished my life. My labor will begin again on the 
morrow. The tomb is not a blind alley ; it is an av- 
enue. It closes at twilight, but opens at the aurora." 

While an exile in Jersey, Victor Hugo buried two 
noble sons, who were, like himself, engaged in literary 
pursuits. He wrote a brief memorial of them, with 
the simple heading, ''My Sons," which contains 
many beautiful passages, full of tender pathos, but 
glowing with the brightness of a glorious hope, — 
energized by the presence of a living faith, which 
looks upward "with joy, into the eternal clearness." 

July 5. — I have been reading a touching little 
tribute to the memory of Titus Salt, w^hich furnishes 
much pleasant food for thought. 

On the western gate of the great Saltaire Manu- 
facturing Works, England, may be seen the single 
word, "out," whose peculiar use in this instance, is a 
good illustration of the idea, that death is but a step- 
pmg out of this busy changeful world into one of 
everlasting rest and peace. A panel in this gate, in- 
scribed with the names of the gentlemen composing 
the firm, has, opposite each name, a little movable 
slide, so arranged, as to be made to indicate, at any 
time, for the benefit of visitors and callers, whether 
said gentleman is "m" or " outy The first name 
on the panel is that of Titus Salt, the founder of 



58 OUT OF DARKNESS INTO LIGHT. 

Saltaire ;^ and opposite this name ever since Decem- 
ber 1876, the slide has been so adjusted as to show 
the word " out." 

To the casual visitor it is as if he had gone on 
a little tour for recreation, or on a short business trip 
to London, or as if he had simply taken a walk by 
the river-side, or, perhaps, home to his 'dinner I 

This man, who was the life and soul of this 
model, industrial town, who had, himself, built it 
in a manner to ensure the comfort and well being of 
the workmen by pleasant dwellings, gardens, baths, 
churches, schools, a park, club-house, infirmary, etc. ; 
this man, who preferred others to himself ; who, 
beginning life a poor boy, devoted the riches 
which flowed in upon him in after years, to improv- 
ing the condition of poor laborers ; who had received 
from the Queen, in view of these industrial services, 
the title of Baronet, and a still greater honor in 
the love and gratitude of thousands whom he had 
lived to bless; this man had simply gone "out" to 
where they "go no more out, forever." 

It may have been wholly without design, but 
this little word standing always against the revered 
name, seemed a beautiful testimonial of the faith of 
his co-partners, that no evil will befall him, in the 
infinite bejond. This simple little word which had 
stood opposite his name perhaps hundreds of times 
before, which never meant harm or loss, or danger 
to him, or occasioned pain or dread to those who 



*A name uniting the names of the founder and the river 
Aaire, on which the town is situated. 



WE DO NOT DIE. 59 

read it, can mean nothing shocking or appalling, 
now. It need not send a pang through the heart, 
nor tears to the eyes ; — it is so much better than the 
word ''dead ;" it is suggestive as it was in his busiest 
days on earth, of a respite from hard work, — of 
freedom and quiet after the struggle and anxiety and 
care, which is such a weariness to the flesh. 

What a blessed thing to go "out" of all this 
toil and moil, this eager, restless life into the sweet 
rest, the largeness and freedom and joyousness of 
Heaven ! 

A lady once said to Wesley, the great Methodist 
preacher, '* Supposing 3^ou were to know that you 
would die at twelve o'clock to-morrow night, how 
would you spend the intervening time ? " 

"Why, just as I intend to spend it," said he, "I 
should preach to-night at Gloucester, and again, 
to-morrow morning. After that I would ride to 
Tewkesbury, preach in the afternoon and meet the 
society in the evening. I should then repair to 
friend Martin's house, as he expects to entertain me, 
converse and pray with the family ; retire to my 
room at ten o'clock ; commend myself to my Heaven- 
ly Father, lie down to rest and icake ii2J in glorijy 

It is evident that this eminently Christian man, 
did not regard the transition from this present life 
to the life which is to come, as anything startling, or 
even greatly different from the changes which were 
constantly coming to him, in his busy and useful 
life. 

Here indeed, we may see what great advantage 



60 OUT OF DARKNESS INTO LIGHT. 

a deeply spiritual and highly cnltured religions na- 
tnre has, in the last snpreme moment, over one 
which though honestly seeking to be like Christ, is 
forever struggling with evil tendencies and carnal 
appetites, and too often being worsted in the conflict. 
The more intimate and tender our relations ^ith 
God and Christ in this life, the less shocking will 
be our summons to the everlasting presence, and the 
less marked the change from earthly labors and 
earthly enjoyment, to the higher employments and 
the more perfect happiness of Heaven. 

But even when we consider the death of those 
who, in the harsh judgment of the world, have been 
least successful in the Christian race, and who ap- 
pear but poorly fitted, as yet, for the companionship 
of angels, it would seem that the requisite change 
of character must be brought about through the 
changed conditions of their being, — their new 
and better environment. They are now relieved of 
the troublesome body, which they had vainly striven 
to "keep under," and are hence removed from the 
many temptations which come through the physical 
organization, and also from those evil associations 
which tend to drag them down. 

On the other hand, they are brought into nearer 
relations with the redeemed of the Lord, with angels, 
and just men made perfect, and with God, as their 
Father, and Christ, as their elder brother. What is 
there now to prevent their "going on unto perfec- 
tion ? " What is to hinder their progress Godward 
from being rapid and uninterrupted ? Somebody 



WE DO NOT DIE. 61 

has said that ''the soul of the Christian at death is like 
a bird uncaged — flying upward." 

The work of sanctification may be far from com- 
pletion, it is true, for "holiness is not a miracle, 
wrought in a moment," it is the result of a long 
course of discipline, of culture and development 
which may continue, for aught ice know, for ages to 
come. We can have but slight conception of what a 
soul may become which is no longer hampered or 
fettered by any earthly bonds, and which lacks none 
of the appliances for improvement or the incentives 
to perfection which are furnished in Heaven. 

But let us try to remember that we can only 
attain to this wonderful possibility of growth and 
perfection, by ''shuffling off this mortal coil." We 
must pass through Jordan, to the "promised land," 
from death u^nto life. 

"A dew-drop falling on the wild sea wave 
Exclaimed in fear, 'I perish in this grave/ 
But in a shell received, that drop of dew, 
Unto a pearl of marvellous beauty grew, 
And, happy now, the grace did magnify 
Which thrust it forth, as it had feared, to die; 
Until again, 'I perish quite,' it said; 
Torn by rude divers from its ocean-bed. 
Oh, unbelieving ! so it came to ^leam 
Chief jewel, in a monarch's diadem ! " 

This beautiful little gem from the Persian, I have 
copied from an old scrap-book. Are not we as much 
as needlessly afraid of death as was this poor little 
dew-drop ? How slow we are to see that we die, in 
order that we may live ! As the seed that is sown 
must die, before the wheat appears, and the grain, in 



62 OUT OF DARKNESS INTO LIGHT. 

turn, must lie low before the sickle, and be crushed 
between the cruel stones, ere it can furnish bread to 
the hungry, which is its grand mission in the world, 
so alone are our souls set free from earthly bondage, 
— so alone can they enter upon the glorious inher- 
itance which awaits them, which is life — eternal 
life ! 

It is thus that "death hath no more dominion 
over us." "Death is swallowed up in victory." 
"Christ hath abolished death and brought life and 
immortality to light, through the Gospel." 

Alas for him who never sees 
The stars shine through his cypress trees ! 
Who, hopeless, lays his dead away. 
Nor looks to see the breaking day 
Across the mournful marble play! 
Who hath not learned in hours of faith, 
The truth, to flesh and sense unknown, 
That Life is ever lord of Death, 
And love can never lose its own ! 

— Wliittier, 

I must not put this book away without writing 
down what the venerable Dr. Dewey said of "Ad- 
justment to death." He has gone from earth, but 
the precious things which he said must remain to 
cheer and* bless us. 

"For my own part, I have long striven to adjust 
my mind, if I may so express myself, to this great 
event of death. I do not say that I have succeeded. 
But this is what I am disposed to say, as the result 
of my present thinking. Let us see each death more 
than we do, as coming under the general ordinance. 
Should it seem a strange or shocking thing that one 
dieth ? Why, all men are dying. It is the tale of 



WE DO NOT DIE. 63 



ages: it is the experience of thousands this hour; 
even while I have been speaking, thousands have de- 
parted from this life ; it is what shall soon be your 
lot and mine ; it shall, in a few years, sweep away the 
whole living generation ; that great course of na- 
ture, that transition which is passing upon the whole 
living universe, should it be a shock, a catastrophe, as 
it were, to rend the world ? Ought it to be so, that 
distraction and agony should wait around this great, 
all-comprehending ordinance of divine wisdom ? 
Would the good God have appointed it, if it had 
been for anything but good ? If it be good, should 
we reject it ? and if it were evil, can we resist it ? 
Even then would I welcome the stoic's firmness or 
the skeptic's apathy. If I could say nothing better, 
when the hour came, I would say, with Mirabeau, 
' To-day, I shall die : nothing remains but to be en- 
veloped with perfumes, to be crowned with flowers, 
to be surrounded with music and so to enter peace- 
ably into the eternal sleep.' 

"But, — thanks be to God! — for us, believers, 
there is a better hope. In that better hope, shame 
were it for us, if we have not a better calmness, — a 
better courage. When others die, then, let us not 
mourn as those who have no hope ; but let us still 
feel that we may hold them dear, and hold ihem for 
our own^ in the great faith of God and of immortal- 
ity. And, when our own time is come, let us calmly 
wrap the mantle of death about us, and say, in the 
words of our great Master and Forerunner : ' Father, 
the hour is come : and we come to thee. To thee all 



64 OUT OF DARKNESS INTO LIGHT. 

goodness, all wisdom, to thee, O thon Infinitude of life 
and love, we come : and in peace, in prayer and in 
faith, yield ourselves to thy will.' " 

Evening. — Once more 1 turn back these pages 
and read over what so many great souls have thought 
and felt, in regard to what we call death; I try to un- 
derstand their words, to drink in their spirit, to real- 
ize the truth, to which my mind assents, but which is 
so contrary to the teaching and the habit of my life. 
I try to see how this glorious doctrine, could it only 
be received with faith and confidence, would lift up 
the souls that are bowed down, and heal the sore and 
broken hearts, that cannot give up their dead. I try 
to take refuge in it from the pain and grief which 
have possessed my own soul, and to receive with 
gratitude the comfort which it offers. 

Oh! then, to sum it all up in a few words, death 
is not death! it is only the stripping of this poor 
husk of a body from the golden grain of our natures, 
— only the shedding of infirmities, weakness and suf- 
fering, and the putting on of new strength and 
beauty and joy; — only an escape from a world of 
temptation and sin into a purer atmosphere and more 
healthy surroundings ; only a change coming to us, 
not unlike the wonderful transformation of night 
into day. 

Ah ! we have witnessed this miracle all our lives; 
we have seen how surely the darkest and most dread- 
ful of nights has fled away before the coming of the 
full-robed King of Day; — we have beheld, again 
and again, the glorious revelation of beauty and 



WE DO NOT DIE' 65 



loveliness, which bursts upon the enraptured vision, 
with the dawning of the morning! Yet, how slow 
are we to comprehend, that death, though it be the 
'^darkest hour" of our earth life, is but to usher in 
the glorious dawn of Heavenly Light! 

"Full above our bright horizon 

Rises now the Sun of Life! 
In his beams are joy and healing, 

Peace and love that pass belief; 
We behold our own lives dawning^ 

Ah! we never lived before — ■ 
Life is one unending morning, 

Death and darkness come no more. 

I find a beautiful lesson, in the ethics of dying, 
in the story of an old Italian soldier, who had fought 
for many years under Garibaldi, and wdiose tongue 
was shot away by a bullet at Melazzo. When Italy 
became free, this dumb soldier of Liberty came to 
America, with his little grandchildren, to whom he 
devoted himself with the greatest faithfulness, untilr-^ 
they were grown; after which he volunteered to act 
as nurse among the unfortunate victims of small-pox 
in one of the mining districts of Pennsylvania, where 
he remained nearly a year. Surviving this exposure, 
he was afterward attacked by an incurable malady, 
attended with extreme suffering. His good physi- 
cian revealed to him, as gently as possible, the hope- 
lessness of his condition, expressing (in writing) 
much tender solicitude and pity for the noble old 
man. In reply, he wrote, " Why, a man must do all 
the work given him! Decdh is bid a icork like ihe 
ofhers. I will try to go through it well and de- 
cently." ''And when I heard that he was gone," 



66 OUT OF DAEKNESS INTO LIGHT. 

said his physician, " I felt that a power for good, a 
strong force had been taken away to work in some of 
the many other mansions that are in God's house." 

Why, then, should we fear, with such utter, 
slavish fear, the coming either to ourselves or our 
friends, of the King of Terrors? 

'' Of the loved, revered, and honored head," said 
Dickens, apostrophising Death, "thou canst not turn 
one hair to thy dread purposes, or make one feature 
odious. It is not that the hand is heavy and will 
fall down when released; it is not that the heart and 
pulse are still; but that the heart teas open, generous 
and true; the heart brave, warm and tender; and the 
pulse, a man's. Strike, shadow, strike! and see his 
good deeds springing from the wound, to sow the 
world with life immortal! " 



V. 
HEAVEN AND WHAT IT HOLDS FOE US. 

August 4. — This is one of the loveliest of sum- 
mer days. We have had the much needed rain, for 
^'hich the thirsty earth has been so long crying out, 
in its mute, helpless fashion; and all Nature is re- 
freshed and beautified. 

The air is deliciously cool and pure, the wide 
o'er-archiug Heavens are of that deep, intense blue 
which makes one feel that the sky is a real and tangi- 
ble somethinq^ not a misty, aerial, dissolving nothing, 
lost in the infinitude of space. 

There are lazy, white clouds, w4th soft downy 
edges, now lying quite motionless against this wall of 
azure, scarcely changing, for a full minute, their pic- 
turesque outlines, and now floating away so leisurely, 
across the vast expanse, that they scarcely appear to 
move, at all. 

The trees, quivering and glinting in the sun- 
light, seem to have a grateful sense of the blessed- 
ness which has come to them with the plenteous 
rain; and the flowers look glad and gay, nodding 
gently to each other in the cool breeze, and answering 
Jpack with brightness the soft touch of the warm sun- 
light, upon their upturned faces. 

It is now so late in the afternoon that the "four- 
o' clocks" have opened, and yet, so cool and pleasant 



68 OUT OF DARKNESS INTO LIGHT. 

has it been, tliat the morning-giories, which have 
creT3t inside the thickly shaded porch, have not 
closed. All day, the overhanging vines that swing 
to and fro in the light breeze, and touch onr faces 
gentlj as we pass, have been covered with thick clus- 
ters of the glorious pink and purple bells, as wide 
open and as fresh, where the sun has not touched 
them, as in the first flush of their morning glory. 
Oh! these morning glories- what lovely hues they 
wear! What lessons of hope and trust are in their 
pure, serene depths! 

When my heart is sad and my faith weak, and 
my hold on God seems loosening, I come out to take 
one more look at these wonderful blossoms. I study, 
anew, their graceful form, their delicate veining and 
exquisite color, and note, for the hundredth time, 
their generous profusion, with a feeling of grateful 
tenderness; and as I remember the homely little 
black seeds which I planted in the earth — planted, 
and nothing more, my heart is reassured. God has 
made them what they are! His care over them has 
never ceased: the grand possibilities hidden so deeply 
in the little black seed are of his ordaining. Thus 
also, I feel assured, will he take care of those grander 
possibilities, (alike ordained of himself) enwrapped 
in our mysterious earth-life, so often dark and un- 
promising, to our feeble comprehension, but so cer- 
tain, in His eyes, to bud and bloom, to grow and» 
luxuriate in unfading beauty, when it has '^pierced 
the mold" of this earthly prison-house, into the light 
and warmth and largeness of the heavenly sphere. 



HEAVEN AND WHAT IT HOLDS FOR US. 69 

Daisy has gone tliis afternoon to invite Minnie 
Norman to her little birth-day party; and my mind 
reverts so sadly, to this time last year, when there 
were two children instead of one, with only a day 
intervening between their birth-days; — when Kuby 
invited Laura and Minnie Norman to he)' birth-day 
"party," and all day long the children were so merry 
and so happy. They frisked and gamboled over the 
place like so many frolicsome lambs, playing all sorts 
of exhilirating outdoor games, and, finally, wdien they 
were thoroughly tired, eating their grand ''picnic" 
dinner, with great glee, under the spreading branches 
of a gnarled old apple-tree. 

Though very busy, and somevvhat pre-occupied, 
myself, I watched them from time to time, with in- 
terest, and was greatly pleased to witness such hearty 
enjoyment, unmarred by any disagreement or misfor- 
tune of any kind. 

Ah! what a merciful hand is that which veils 
from us the events of coming time! What if I had 
known that was Ruby's last birth-day? What if she 
had known it. 

August 10. — Daisy brought home a handful of 
bright flowers, yesterday, from Mrs. Wright's — red 
and purple and orange-colored zinnias, rich, double 
marigold and bright-eyed pansies — throwing them 
down carelessly upon the kitchen-table. AVhen I 
went out, toward evening, I found them, limp and 
withered, but they soon recovered their fresh, crisp 
look, after being put into a mug of cold water. This 



10 OUT OF DARKNESS INTO LIGHT 

morning she brought in a beantiful cluster of pinks, 
which the pigs in one of their surreptitious raids 
upon the flower-beds, had rooted quite out of the 
ground, and which made a fine addition to our bou- 
quet of yesterday. 

The sight of a bunch of flowers, however simple, 
always recalls Ruby to my mind, she was so passion- 
ately fond of flowers, and always took such pains to 
gather them ''for mamma." From the time the first 
violets peeped above the grasses in the old apple- 
orchard, to the late autumn, when there were only a 
few hardy ones left, she used to keep me supplied 
with fiowers, of one kind or another; — often gather- 
ing the dry, brown things after they had gone to seed, 
and mingling bright colored leaves and bits of ever- 
green and pretty gxasses with them, making them 
really quite tasteful and attractive. 

As I look at the beautiful flowers growing every- 
where, in remote corners and out-of-the-way places, 
and think how sweet and pure and elevating their in- 
fluence, how glorious their mission on earth, I often 
wonder if there will not be flowers in Heaven; — the 
very same dear things that have so often lifted our 
hearts to God, and saved our souls from desperation, 
here, — nestling, perhaps, close beside the wondrous 
rich and perfect plants, which flourish in the garden 
of the Lord. 

"And it may be that all which lends 

The soul an upward impulse, here, 
With a diviner beauty blends, 

And greets us in a holier sphere, 



HEAVEN AND WHAT IT HOLDS FOR US. 71 

Through groves where blighting never fell. 
The humbler flowers of earth may twine; 

And simple draughts from childhood's well 
Blend with the angel-tasted wine." 

Yes. '^Itmaybe." Oh, may it be! 

It is only when we come to think of Heaven as 
the abode of our dear ones — when we find it im- 
possible to repress the longing in our sore hearts, to 
know what they are doing and how they are faring, 
that we come to realize full}^ how surprisingly little 
we knoiv of Heaven ! 

Even the sacred Scriptures give us but the 
faintest glimpses of the Spirit Land. The pictures 
of Heaven given in the book of Revelation are highly 
imaginative, and appeal to the imagination rather 
than the reason; and, though they may be an inspir- 
ation and a help and comfort, they do not seem to me 
to add, materially, to our actual knowledge of the 
unseen world. 

The passage from Paul, "Eye hath not seen, nor 
ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of 
man, the things which God hath prepared for those 
that love him," seems to place the Apocalyptic de- 
scription in its true light. It is the highest ideal 
conception of the writer, which, he himself may 
have felt, with Paul, must fall far short of the great 
reality. 

After so many centuries, which have brought 
increased knowledge and larger capacity, ought not 
we be able to form a higher and more perfect 
ideal of the heavenly country? — and is there any 
reason why we should not make our own intelligent 



12 OUT OF DARKNESS INTO LIGHT 

conception as real to out own souls, as did St. John, 
the divine? 

Not that our ideal is, in all respects, different 
from his; and the horses and trumpets and garments 
dipped in blood, the terrible beasts and dragons and 
unclean spirits, have dropped out of the vision for 
us; but we love to think, with him, of the city, 
which has no need of the sun, neither of the moon 
to shine in it, for the glory of God doth lighten it, 
and the Lamb is the light thereof; — which ''has 
no temple therein, for the Lord God Almighty and 
the Lamb are the temple of it." 

We love to look upon '' the pure river of water of 
life, clear as crystal," and ''the tree of life, on either 
side of the river, whose leaves are for the healing of 
the nations." 

We rejoice, as did this wonderful Bevelator, in 
the belief that "there shall be no night there," — that 
"there shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor 
crying," for "God shall wipe all tears from their 
eyes;" "neither shall there be any more pain, for 
the former things have passed away." 

We love to contemplate his impressive picture of 
the "great multitude which no men could number, of 
all nations and kindred and people and tongues, 
standing before the throne, clothed with white robes, 
and palms in their hands." 

And our hearts beat high with hope and joy, as 

. we read the precious promises he records. "To him 

that overcometh, will I give to eat of the tree of life, 

which is in the midst of the Paradise of God." — 



HEAVEN AND WHAT IT HOLDS FOR US. 



" He that overcometh, shall be clothed in white 
raiment, and I will not blot out his name out of the 
book of life, but I will confess his name before my 
Father and before his angels." 

" He that overcometh shall inherit all things ; 
and I will be his God, and he shall be my son." 

"Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord, 
from henceforth : yea, saith the spirit, that they 
may rest from their labors ; and their works do 
follow them." 

Evening. — Far be it from me to be over anxious, 
or over curious, in regard to those things which are 
not revealed to mortal ken ; and I think I understand 
this little stanza of Whittier's, so humble, so depre- 
cating, immediately following one of the most beau- 
tiful of beatific visions. 

"But be the prying vision veiled, 
And let the seeking lips be dumb, — 

Where even seraph eyes have failed, 
Shall mortal blindness seek to come?" 

Yet, I cannot ignore the fact, — nor can I change it 
— that my mind is much of the time busy with 
thoughts of the future world ; and that grave ques- 
tions beset me at every turn. I often think of 
Thoreau's sententious counsel to a friend, " One 
world at a time, Parker ; one world at a time." But 
I see how it was with him — this gentle poet-natural- 
ist, and care-free lover of all sweet things ; — he was 
so enamored of the beauty of this world, so grateful 
for it, so reverent toward it, so satisfied with it, that . 



74 OUT OF DARKNESS INTO LIGHT. 

his heart had felt no need to reach out toward the 
other world. 

And what is more, he had never lost out of his 
life here, that dearest and most precious of all gifts, 
a loving child — else he wonkl have sought the uni- 
verse over for it. And, surely, so true and jjure a 
soul as his need waste no time in foolish apprehen- 
sions, on its own account, or idle speculations in re- 
gard to the unseen world, which benefit no one ; — he 
knew that in God's own good time, the great mystery 
would be unfolded to him, — that, when, amid the 
gathering mists of death, this world shade fould 
away, there would burst upon his clearer vision, a 
new and glorious revelation of the world to come. 

To us, who strain tear-dimmed eyes heavenward 
that we might catch some slightest glimpse of the 
loved ones gone before, is vouchsafed something: 
(though it be not actual knowledge) — something to 
which faith may cling, rejoicing, and upon which the 
soul may lean wath the most perfect confidence, and 
trust ! 

It is the absence of testimony, the silence of the 
grave, the mute lips of the dead, the speechless heav- 
ens above us, that make faith so grand and noble a 
thing. 

And it is "precisely because we know so little of 
these things," that "we should endeavor," as Whately 
says, "so to dwell on them, as to make the most of 
what little knowledge w^e have." 

And in the same vein, wrote one of the great 
commentors, "Let us endeavor, then, by reading, con- 



HEAVEN AND WHAT IT HOLDS FOR US. 75 

templation and prayer, to know as much of Heaven 
as we can, that we may be desiring and longing to be 
there." 

And I find in a recent sermon this beautiful pas- 
sage, which opens to us, it seems to me, the true way 
to attain to a larger comprehension of heavenly 
things. ''If only, day by day, we make the highest 
thought, 'whereto we have already attained' our law 
of life, and carry into our actions the sense of jus- 
tice, the sense of God's presence, the affections which 
take us out of our narrowness and selfishness, then 
our daily thought and consciousness imll conned us 
with wlicd is eternal. The instinct of life then be- 
comes the instinct of immortality. The fidlness of 
our 'present life, becomes an augury of whcd is to he. 
The larger our thought, the more comprehensive and 
vital our affections, the more delicate our moral per- 
ceptions, and the broader the field of moral relations 
into which they lead us, in short, the greater our vi- 
tality in every direction and the wider snd higher 
the sphere of spiritual interests into which our life 
expands, — the more closely does our inward con- 
sciousness associate us with things which are eternaV 
And not only is this fullness of our present life " an 
augury of what is to be," but it must also be the 
measure of the soul's happiness after the heavenly 
state is attained. A stream cannot rise higher than 
its fountain. How, then, shall a soul that is not 
filled with God on earth, attain to the fullness of joy 
in his everlasting presence in Heaven ? 

So said the lamented Horace Bushnell : " Joy is 



16 OUT OF DARKNESS INTO LIGHT. 

a prize unbought, and is freest, purest in its flow 
when it comes unsought. No getting into Heaven, 
as a place will compass it. You must carry it with 
you, else it is not there. You must have it in you, as 
the music of a well-ordered soul, the fire of a holy 
purpose, the welling up, out of the central depths, of 
eternal springs that hide their waters there." 

It is curious to note how the graceful verbiage of 
a poem of George Eliot's is made to clothe this same 
beautiful thought. 

"So to live is heaven; 
To make undying iniisic in the world, 
Breathing as beauteous order that controls 
With growing sway the growing life of man. 

This is life to come, 
Which martyred men have made more glorious 
For us who strive to follow. May I reach 
That purest heaven, be to other souls 
The cup of strength in some ^reat agony, 
Enkindle generous ardor, feed pure, love, 
Beget the smiles that have no cruelty — 
Be the sweet presence of a good diffused, 
And in diffusion, ever more intense. 
So shall I join the choir invisible. 
Whose music is the gladness of the world." 

Says Mr. Savage: 

"The Paradise men seek, the city bright. 

That gleams above the clouds for dying eyes, 

Is only human goodness in the skies. 

Earth's deeds, well done, glow into heavenly light." 

All questions, then, relative to the actual beauty 
and glory of the heavenly place, should be secondary 
to the question whether we are prepared for their en- 
joyment; — and in accordance with the clearness of 



HEAVEN AND WHAT IT HOLDS FOR US. 77 

our moral perception, the correctness of our moral 
I)urpose, and the purity of our devotion to God, will 
be our conception of the beauty and the glory 
which is yet to be revealed. 

" It doth not yet appear," says John in his first 
Epistle, "what we shall be ; but we know that when 
he shall appear, we shall be like him, for we shall see 
him as he is." And he adds, ''And everyone that hath 
this hope in him purifieth himself even as he is pure." 

This hope ! The hope of Heaven ! The hope 
of an endless life, in a world of unalloyed bliss, in 
near communion with the Father and Savior of us 
all, and in sweet companionship with all whom we 
have known and loved on earth! What an incitement, 
indeed, to purity and cleanness of heart ! What 
could possibly be a higher inducement to a human 
soul to seek after holiness than "this hope" ? 

And Peter speaks of being "begotten again unto 
a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from 
the dead, to an inheritance^ incorruptible and unde- 
filed and that f adeth not away, reserved in Heaven 
for you." And again he says, "For so an entrance 
shall be ministered unto you, abundantly, into the 
everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior, Jesus 
Christ." 

And Paul says, in language which, though it 
may be somewhat ambiguous, shows the depths of 
his trust in the reality of Heaven, "Which is the 
earnest of our inheritance, until the redemption of 
the purchased possession, unto the praise of his 
glory." And ''The eyes of your understanding 



18 OUT OF DARKNESS INTO LIGHT. 

being enlightened ; that ye may know what is the 
hope of his calling, and w^hat the riches of the glory 
of his inheritance in the saints." And again, in his 
epistle to Titns, "That being justified by his grace, 
we should be made heirs according to the hope of 
eternal life." 

All these passages, in which we are spoken of as 
Jieirs and Heaven as an inheritance, indicate sonship 
as the basis or security of future blessedness. 

Oh ! have we ever half realized what a great 
thing it is, to be the children of such a father ? 
''Beloved, now are we the sons of God." ''Behold 
what manner of love the Father hafh bestowed upon 
us that vre should be called the sons of God." 

Is it from long familiarity with the words of such 
passages, that we are so little impressed with the 
depth of their meaning, and that we so often forget, 
as we go, grovelling amid our labors and cares and 
anxieties, to what a higli estate ice are horn? 

It is said that w^hen the Danish missionaries ap- 
pointed some of the Malabrian converts to translate 
a catechism in which it was mentioned as the priv- 
ilege of Christians to become the sons of God, one 
of the translators was startled at so bold a saying, as 
he thought it, and said, ''It is too much; let me 
rather render it, thejj shall he permitted to kiss his 
feet!" 

There is a little story from the Hindu scriptures, 
which beautifully illustrates the effect it should 
have upon us, to know and understand that we are 
the children of God, and "if children, then heirs." 



HEAVEN AND WHAT IT HOLDS FOE US. 19 

In the heart of a great forest was a young lad, 
who believed himself to be the son of the forester 
with whom he lived. He went out, every day, to 
help cut and pile the wood, and looked forward to 
the time when he should be able to cut and pile wood 
on his own account. He had no higher ambition, 
because in his seclusion, he had not learned of any 
higher work. But one day, a messenger passed 
through the forest, and looking upon the lad, said to 
him, "Do you know who you are ?" ^"^ Yes, I am the 
son of the forester," answered the lad. ''No," said 
the messenger, "you are not ; you are the son of the 
king ! In your infancy, you were hidden away in 
this forest, to save you from the hands of murderers. 
But the time is coming when you will rule the king- 
dom in place of your father." 

''And with this message," says the narrator, ''the 
lad awoke. A sense of something in him greater 
than he had known took possession of his whole 
being. He began to straighten up to a new dignity : 
he felt the royal blood glowing in his veins. Some- 
thing bore witness in his spirit that he was a prince ; 
and in due time, he went forth to sit on the throne 
and sway the sceptre." 

Is it not time that this startling question, "Do 
you Kmoiv toko you are?'' should rouse us from our 
stupid lethargy and thrill our souls with the new joy 
of this great revelation, which we have heard but 
never received, that we are really the children of the 
''Great King ;'' — heirs of the everlasting kingdom! 
"Fear not, little flock, it is your Father's good pleas- 
ure to give you the kingdom." 



80 OUT OF DARKNESS INTO LIGHT. 

August 23. — Dr. Bellows speaks of the future 
life as "a perpetuation of our individual spirits, pre- 
serving the memory of life, the accumulation of ex- 
perience, the discipline of earthly existence, in a 
higher state of being and of happiness, and under a 
spiritual sky, in more direct and open vision of God, 
and with departed friends and the spirits of the just 
made perfect in Heaven." 

This is a clear and concise statement of w^hat 
seems to me a rational view of the future state. But 
I am convinced that it is not by argument or reasoning 
or by comparison of statements of faith, or any such 
means, that we are to attain to the living faith that 
reaches ''within the vail," — the vital belief that 
takes hold on God. ''What we need," says Mr. 
Ellis, "is that wealth of moral and religious being^ 
that reality of holy communion, that continuing in 
prayer, that custom and usage of piety and purity 
which shall be our way into the immortal because 
the eternal life. If we would be strengthened in this 
blessed faith, w^e must be strengthened with might in 
our inner man ; and we are always helped in this 
thing by communion in speech and life, with those 
who simply believe more than w^e, though they know 
as little, and can argue no better. 

''I think that in all ordinary conditions it belongs 
to a nature v/ell born and well taught in religion to 
believe in the life of the world to come. It is the 
mind that is turned earthward and fascinated and 
pre-occupied with passing sights and sounds, that is 
left to say, ' Let us eat and drink for to-morrow we 



HEAVEN AND WHAT IT HOLDS FOR US. SI 

die.' As we are strengthened to live nobly by our 
great hope, so our living nobly strengthens this hope 
and lifts us into the air and light of Heaven. It is a 
matter which I do not care to hear argued. I am 
satisfied that, for the present, at least, little help is 
to come to us in the wa^ of debate. We must groio 
into the blessed persuasion. To live as if it were 
true, makes it true ; yes, and to live with those and 
listen to those with whom it is a foregone conclusion. 

"They alone are called of God to inspire and 
guide and comfort his children, — who are strong 
in faith, and out of the abundance of their faith, can 
utter only words of faith." 

And here is a practical lesson, in continuation of 
the subject. ''If we would be sure and certain that 
to depart from this world is to enter into everlasting 
life in the Divine Presence, we must strive to live 
in this Divine Presence, here and now. We must 
not be strangers to Him, whose life in us, is our immor- 
tality." 

Feeling this certainty, it is but natural that the 
mind should please itself with pictures of how it 
may be in Heaven ; — and this may be an inno- 
cent and harmless exercise of the imagination, 
provided it is kept within proper limits, and the 
creations of fancy are not allowed to encroach 
upon the realm of fact, or a natural interest 
to degenerate into foolish curiosity. So many of the 
questions in regard to the future, have no solution 
which can be relied on as faultless, however labor- 
iously and assiduously men may have wrought upon 



82 OUT OF DABKXESS IXTO LIGHT. 

tliem, that, instead of feeling dissatisfied because we 
cannot IxHOic, we should strive to strengthen our 
faith in God and enlarge our trust in his infinite wis- 
dom and goodness. 

All is in the hands of the most lo^^ing of Fath- 
ers, who knows far better than we what we shall need 
in the other world. 

"More and more strongly do I feel, as I grow 
older," said the excellent Lydia Maria Child, ''that 
this unsatisfactor} existence is the mere threshold 
of a palace of glories ; but reason is importunate 
with its questions of how and where. I strive to at- 
tain to an habitual state of child-like trust, to feel 
always, as I do sometimes, like a little one that 
places its hand within its father's and is satisfied to 
be led it knows not whither." 

"Lead as thou wilt! I ask not, Lord, that clear 
The path should lie, the skies above me shine; 

It is enough to know that thou art near, 

And through the darkness feel my hand in thine." 

Sepiemher I. — I have a letter from MoUie, (Mrs. 
Drappehs,) that seems to run so much in the chan- 
nel with my own thoughts, and mingle so naturally 
with their current, that I really do not see how I can 
keep it out of my journal. Fardonez moi, ma cliere 
cousine. 

She says, "Your letter came yesterday, with 
Xilewen's picture ; he has grown old and the sorrow 
shows in his face, but we have all long ago passed 
the season of joyance. I sometimes think of that 
old picture of "Manhood" in the ''Voyage of Life" 
— the series which Mrs. A. painted, you remember, 



HEAVEN AND WHAT IT HOLDS FOR US. 83 

— how dread and imijassible were tlie rocks in the 
current — how near the demon! — how far away the 
angel ! and I think I know^ how true it was to life 

''I have thought so much of the other world 
since mother died — so longing to j)enetrate its mys- 
tery, so yearning for some token from her that she 
still thinks of me, — that she forgives all my remiss- 
ness. 

"And in so far as by my true beholding and ap- 
prehension of her loving nature, I could interpret 
and apply her tenderness to my remorseful, self -ac- 
cusing spirit, 1 have been blessed with a sense of her 
nearness, of her motherliness enfolding me in the 
sufficingness of her presence. I used to think of 
Heaven, when we w^ere children, — you and I, in the 
old home at P. — as a place that stretched out in the 
sky over our garden ; — toward the colder east — in an 
afternoon — lay the 'sea of glass' and the 'great white 
throne,' but over the western end, closest to the 
house, where the rose-bushes and currants grew, and 
the flow^ers bloomed, and above which the sun shone 
warm, and the soft, white clouds hung low, ihere 
were the clustering angels, and the all-blessedness of 
being, there. I think the gathering of all the com- 
fort of Heaven, into that seemingly nearest place, 
came from the dread of that far-off -ness suggested by 
the descriptive terms applied to it in Revelation. 
And when I read ' The Gates Ajar,' its chief charm 
for me was in that bringing near to this present life 
and its needs, the fuller opportunities and larger re- 
sources of that warm-hued clime which the Author 



84 OUT OF DARKNESS INTO LIGHT, 

described. She imagined a place lighted by the 
glows of life and love, as we are already acquainted 
with them. Through those 'gates ajar' streamed 
into the 'beyond' the ruddy firelight of earth-made 
hearths and homes, whose 'Maker and Builder is 
God,' and colored all its joys 

"I think I believe that the spirit-world is all 
about us, — that our dear ones see us, and can bear that 
wx shall sorrow and make mistakes, because they 
know the end of these, — and that development and 
progress and powder to achieve and attain, are going 
on and will go on forever, in proportion to our effort 
here." 

It was such hard work to write and MoUie was 
so tired that she could not pursue the subject furth- 
er ; — she stopped right here, where I wanted so 
much to hear more. Oh ! how I longed for an hour's 
talk with her ! — aye, a day or a week would be all 
too short for this wonderful theme ! 

Sepiemher 15, — Evening, — Feeling unusually 
weary, this afternoon, I lay down and took a long 
nap, as a restorative measure. 

On awaking, I was almost blinded by the bright 
sunlight, with which the room was flooded. I made 
several ineffectual attempts to open my eyes ; — at 
last, raising myself on one elbow, I bent my head 
close down to the shaded window-sill, behind my bed, 
and tried once more to open my eyes, this time, hav- 
ing everything shut out from my line of vision, save 
this single object, in such close proximity. 

Being able, after a little time to take in this 



HEAVEN AND WHAT IT HOLDS FOR US. 85 

narrow view, I made a leisurely survey of the knots 
and the nail-prints, on the sill, and the grain and 
texture of the wood, until I could enlarge a little the 
sphere of my observation, taking in by slow degrees, 
the adjacent wall, the wall at the foot of the bed and 
then a portion of the ceiling overhead ; and thus 
graduallj^ becoming accustomed to the light, I was 
finally able to look about the room as usual, without 
causing pain to my eyes. 

While I was thus struggling with the weakness 

of my long-closed eyes, the thought occurred to me, 

that after the sleep of death, our awakening to the 

. light and joy of a new world may be somewhat like 

this. 

At first, it may be, we shall be overpowered by 
the dazzling brightness which shines about us, — the 
unimagined beauty and loveliness of the heavenly 
place, and our poor souls, unaccustomed to such 
blissful experience, must seek some retired spot, — 
some little quiet nook, narrowing the view and shut- 
ting out the illimitable splendors and the unspeaka- 
ble glory, so suddenly revealed, until such time as 
they shall be able to bear it, through gradual en- 
largement of the spiritual vision. In like manner, it 
may be, shall we taste the sweet waters of the un- 
numbered fountains of joy, one by one, and draw 
from the serene depths of the measureless river of 
peace, little by little, according to our capacity. 

Sepiember 17. — Since I received Cousin MoUie's 
letter in which she answered so modestly my request 



86 OUT OF DARKNESS INTO LIGHT, 

that she would give me her ideas of Heaven, ''I 
think I believe that the spirit-world, etc." I have 
been searching diligently to find what others " think 
they believe ;" and I have been so deeply interested 
not only in the subject matter presented, but also hj 
the variety of expression employed by different 
authors, and the various standpoints from which they 
view the subject, that I cannot refrain from placing 
some extracts in my journal, for future reference; 
moreover, I know that MoUie will be glad to see 
them if ever we meet again on earth. 

1 like Longfellow's — shall I say "view" ? — it 
has rather the ring of an invocation — it is, at least, a 
beautiful apostrophe : " Thou glorious spirit land ! 
Oh, that I could behold thee as thou art ! the region 
of light and life and love, and the dwelling-place of 
those beloved ones whose being has flowed onward, 
like a silver-clear stream into the solemn sounding 
main, into the ocean of Eternity." And he adds, 
'' Yes, death brings us again to our friends. They are 
waiting for us and we shall not long delay. They are 
gone before us, and are like the angels in heaven. They 
stand upon the borders of the grave to welcome us, 
with the countenance of affection which they wore on 
earth, yet more lovely — more radiant, more spir- 
itual." ' 

I find, in the same connection, evidence that he 
possessed a submissive Christian spirit, born, per- 
haps, of his own deep sorrow. " Peace, peace ! Why 
dost thou question God's providence?" And in 
" Kavanagh," he says, '-'- The gale that blows from 



HEAVEN AND WHAT IT HOLDS FOE US. 81 

God, we must endure, toiling but not repining." I 
notice these sayings simply as enhancing the value of 
his thought of Heaven. 

"It is said that Heaven is a place of rest," said 
Dr. Storrs, ''Yes; but it is not the rest of laziness, it 
is not the rest of passivity ; it is the rest of tri- 
umphant power, working without break or jar, every 
force in completest harmony with every other, and 
all operating with easy and unabating success. Now, 
this moral and personal power we should seek, in its 
fullest development, that we may be ready for that 
higher life. It is not power over mechanical instru- 
ments or over political combinations, but personal, 
moral, spiritual force, fully developed, in us, that we 
should aspire to carry into those realms of supreme 
and mysterious existence, to fit us to enter which, 
Christ came, and the holy spirit is ever coming, 
silent as the sunshine, mighty as the ultimate power 
of nature, as the power of God himself. There is no 
possible motive for the culture of character or the 
high culture of power in us, like that which comes 
from the as yet unrealized but not unimagined 
realms of life, which Christ, through his mission, his 
cross, and his ascension, opens to our longing, loving 
hope and faith. Here is the grandest benediction of 
uplifting power falling from the heavens upon the 
earth, to elevate, purify, ennoble the spirit of man." 

I must add, also, his picture of our entrance into 
the celestial realms. 

'' We shall hear the voices of heavenly hosts ; we 
shall hear heavenly bells chiming, as we enter : we 



88 OUT OF DARKNESS INTO LIGHT. 

shall catch the echo of seraphic song ; we shall meet 
our friends, we shall see the Master and the dis- 
ciples, and with them we shall be for ever more." 

And here is what Beecher ''thought" many 
years ago of the possible exaltation of soul which we 
may experience in Heaven. Like many of his best 
thoughts, it is pointed by an illustration. He said, 
" I was reared in a substantial New England home, 
without a picture, without a color, without one single 
element for the aesthetic hunger. From my father's 
house I went to the barracks of a college where I 
had nothing to feed my sense of beauty and thence to 
the West, where for years I had no commerce with 
beauty except that of the heavens and the earth, in 
the primeval forests and on the prairies, which God 
has given to all. 

"And when, in 1850, it was my lot to go to 
Europe and I trod upon the ground which imagina- 
tion had made sacred ; especially when I visited 
Stratford - on - Avon, where Shakspeare lived and 
wrote, I was almost enchanted. I well remember 
the morning of that day. • 

''It was wondrous, crystalline, opalescent, divine. 
The heavens were unfathomable, and the earth was 
gone. I recollect distinctly that, as I walked toward 
the village church, my feet had become insensitive ; 
nor did I know whether I touched the ground or 
not, and every sound I heard seemed to excite my 
higher faculties, as no sounds had ever excited them 
before. I saw the sky -lark spring from the ground 
and rise spirally toward heaven, singing as it rose, 



HEAVEN AND WHAT IT HOLDS FOR US. 89 

and to my thought, its note was sweeter than an 
angel's voice. All things, within and without, 
seemed transcendent beyond a parallel. 

"And afterward, when I walked iu the Louvre 
and Luxembourg and saw that wilderness of pic- 
tures, I became almost a spirit ; I wished neither to 
eat nor to drink nor to sleep; I almost knew myself 
no more in the flesh. 

''This elevation of the soul, even from earthly 
causes, as you rise upward beyond a certain line, may 
interpret, somewhat, our capacity of exaltation when 
we come into the divine presence ; but none except 
the regenerate, the ransomed and the angelic can 
fully tell what the power of that presence is, as it 
falls upon the souls of men ; even they cannot reveal 
it." 

And here is a beautiful passage which may 
throw light upon the Scripture declaration, ''neither 
have entered into the heart of man, the things which 
God hath prepared for those who love him," by show- 
ing how and w^hy it is that we are unable to form 
any adequate conception of the glory to be revealed. 

" What the other life will bring I know not, only 
that I shall awake in God's likeness and see him as 
he is. 

" If a child had been born and had spent all his 
life in the Mammoth Cave, how impossible would it 
be for him to comprehend the upper world ! His 
parents might tell him of its life and light and 
beauty, and its sounds of joy. They might heap 
up the sands into mounds and ti'y to show him 



90 OUT OF DABKNESS INTO LIGHT. 

by pointing to stalactites, how grass and trees 
and flowers grow out of the ground, till at 
length, with laborious thinking, the child would 
fancy he had gained a true idea of the unknown 
land. But when he came up some May morning, 
with ten thousand birds singing in the trees and the 
heavens bright, blue, and full of sunlight, and the 
wind blowing softly through the young leaves, all 
a-glitter with dew, and the landscape stretching 
away, green and beautiful, to the horizon, with what 
rapture would he gaze about him and see how poor 
were all the fancyings and interpretations, which 
were made within the cave, of the things which grew 
and lived without; and how would he wonder that 
he could have regretted to leave the silence and the 
dreary darkness of his old abode." 

Will it not be thus with us "when we emerge 
from this cave of earth, into that land where spring 
growths are," and where is life and joy ineffable ? 

There is a pretty conceit in the following lines, 
but I do not now remember who wrote them. 

"Earth is our Httle island home 
And Heaven the neighboring continent 

Whence winds to every inlet come 
With balmiest scent. 

And tenderest whispers thence we hear 

From those who lately sailed across. 
They love us still! Since Heaven is near 

Death is not loss." 

"We may be sure," said Emerson, speaking of 
the "state of the newly parted soul," "that it must 
talk with what is best in Nature, that it corresponds 
with the known works of Him who sculptured the 



HEAVEN AND WHAT IT HOLDS FOR US. 91 

globes of the firmament and wrote the moral law. It 
must be stabler than mountains, fresher than rain- 
bows, must agree with tides, with flowers, with the 
rising and setting of autumnal stars." 

Concerning, the locality of Heaven, Edward 
Everett Hale says, " When I was a bo3^ and read in 
one of Buckminster's sermons that when I died I 
might inhabit the planet Jupiter or the star, Arc- 
turus, I was delighted with the suggestion. But 
now I am a man, now I think I know more, I find I 
do not want to be shut up in any one place. I want 
to be free of all — free of the universe. And I expect 
to be. I cannot but observe that the most spiritual 
men — the men who have absolute faith in immortal- 
ity, too, Paul and the other writers of the Epistles, — 
have no notion that they are to be cabined or con- 
fined. 

"The 'house which is from Heaven' gives liberty 
which we do not enjoy here. The first time I ever 
saw a telegraphic message, — and it was one of the 
first messages that ever passed over a long wire — 
I felt at the instant that we preachers had now a 
better illustration than ever before of the largeness of 
spiritual life ; that life in the spirit does not have to 
say 'here' or 'there,' is not fettered by time. It 'sees 
as it is seen' and 'knows as it is known.' And I trust 
that, in proportion as we free ourselves from the 
old-fashioned clothing, borrowed from pictures of 
Persian Paradise or of Latin Elysium, we approach 
to some sense of such spiritual being, though, of 
course, we cannot attain it. This is what we are to 



92 OUT OF DARKNESS INTO LIGHT. 

hope for, newness of life, forevermore, and infinite 
freedom.'' 

This is a glorious prospect for great sonls, but 
there are many humble ones so familiar here with 
temptation, and poverty and wretchedness, that they 
will be quite satisfied with less of liberty; who will 
not care in what planet they are '^confined" if they 
may but have the joy of sins forgiven, of a reunion 
with all that they held dear on earth, and exemption 
from sorrow, pain and death, forevermore. 

Methinks it is but another interpretation of free- 
dom, that some of us who are weary and worn with 
this earthly pilgrimage should be permitted to re- 
main quietly in the ''green pastures" and "beside 
the still waters," where there is sweet rest and peace. 

It must be that Heaven will bring to each soul 
what that soul most needs. That one will be as free 
to stay in a quiet spot that he loves, as another, with 
higher aspirations and larger capacity, is to make 
the round of the universe, at will. When Thoreau 
was asked once what he believed in regard to the 
future life, he replied simply, though the answer 
sounded a little strange, that he thought he should 
not go away from Concord. He so loved th6 dear 
old place, he felt, I suppose, that Heaven would not 
be Heaven unless this were a part of it. — And who 
can know the locality of the ''many mansions" — or 
be sure, that some of them may not be on our dear 
old earth, — places sacred to us, through the most 
holy and beautiful associations ! — And if he icere 
there, who could know it ? A spirit is unincumbered 



HEAVEN AND WHAT IT HOLDS FOR US. 93 

with visible belongings, it has no earthly needs, it 
makes no sign. The gentle soul of Thoreau might 
hover over the sweet waters he loved so well, and 
not the faintest ripple would betray his presence 
there, — or roam through his old, familiar haunts, 
in the shadow of the fragrant pines, without a foot- 
print left behind. 

But, wherever his place may be, we may feel 
assured that God has provided that his soul shall be 
^* satisfied;" that always the things which he loved, 
the pursuits which were congenial to him, will be 
part and parcel of his happiness. 

''Think ye the notes of holy song 
On Milton's tuneful ear, have died? 

Think ye that Raphael's ano^el throng- 
Has vanished from his side?" 

Thus sang our sweet-souled, saintly Quaker 
poet, who believes that in Heaven 

.... "We live our life again; 

Or warmly touched, or coldly dim, 
The pictures of the past remain — 

Man's works shall follow him." 

September 24. — Llewen has gone to town this 
evening to post some letters, and I am sitting up, 
waiting for him. It is very still and quiet in the 
house, but there is a lively chorus of happy voices 
outside. The shrill chirping of crickets, and the odd 
little strain of the ''katy-did" — forever contradicting 
itself, mingled with the far-off notes of some wakeful 
mocking-bird, keep me company through the long, 
lonely hours. 

Daisy is fast asleep in her little bed : she re- 
peated her simple evening prayer with much fervor : 



94 OUT OF DARKNESS INTO LIGHT. 

"In my little bed I lie, 
Heavenly Father, hear my cry; 
Lord, protect me through the night, 
Brmg me safe to morning light," 

and dropped immediately into the sweet sleep of in- 
nocent childhood. 

This putting Daisy to bed, alone, has been one 
of my saddest daily experiences, since Ruby died. 

However busy or burdened or worried a mother 
may be, during the day-time, all the fountains of ten- 
derness are unlocked in her bosom when she goes 
with, her little children to make them safe for their 
nightly rest. 

And when, after she has done this every night 
for years and years, never on any account committing 
the work to other hands ; when, some night, — though 
everything else seems the same ; though there is 
warmth and comfort in the room, and the lamp 
burns brightly in its corner, and the sound of 
merry voices from below comes faintly to her ears, 
through the open door, — she finds that one of the 
dear ones is not there ; and realizes that it will never 
again be there ; — oh !• the experience is one to break 
the mother-heart ! 

But she has one solace, and who will take it 
from her ? The prayer she sends up to Heaven for 
the living ones, embraces also the one who is out 
of sight. She can still commend to the Father's care 
the loved one who is no longer a care to her, — for 
whom she can no longer perform the smallest ser- 
vice. 



HEAVEN AND WHAT IT HOLDS FOR US. 95 

This is a great comfort. When Enby and 
Daisy had each repeated the little prayer they 
learned in infancy, I used to follow with one begin- 
ning, "Savior, tender Shepherd, hear us, Bless thy 
little lambs to-night," and now I pray this same 
prayer night after night, and never did I feel more 
deeply the movings of earnest entreaty in my soul 
for my dear Buby, than now, when my lips falter, 
'mid sobs and tears, "bless my little lambs to-night !" 

Only one poor little lamb is left to me but I be- 
lieve He wdll hear me as truly for the one He has 
taken. 

The love which is inextinguishable, which nei- 
ther time nor death can change, the love which God 
has implanted in the soul — shall it cease to bring 
its cherished objects to the throne of grace, because 
they are out of sight ? 

Said a lady who had known the bitterness of 
sorrow, and who spoke from a full heart: ''Those 
whom I have loved and lost seem nearer to me if I 
daily name them in my prayers." 

'^I have a friend, I cannot tell just where. 
For out of sight and hearing he has gone; 

Yet, now, as once, I breathe for him a prayer, 
Although his name is carved upon a stone. 

O blessed habit of the lips and heart ! 

Not to be broken by the might of Death. 
A soul beyond seems so less far apart, 

If daily named to Heaven with fervid breath. 

Is one at rest with God, we well may think 
He overhears the prayer we pray for him; 

Our Father lets us keep the sacred link; 
The hand of prayer Love's holy lamp can trim." 



96 OUT OF DARKNESS INTO LIGHT. 

It was only last evening that, as I was about to 
leave Daisy snug in bed, and was just bending over 
to give her the last good-night kiss, she detained me 
gently, as though something was on her mind, and 
whispered very earnestly, "Mamma, I want my life 
to be as pure and spotless as the beautiful w^hite 
lily," alluding, as I supposed to the story of '' Gertie 
Brace's Easter Offering," which I had read to her 
during the day. 

Dear child ! It was a beautiful wish, and why 
may it not be realized ? If the mire and dirt of the 
shallow pond does not soil or disfigure the lovely 
white lilies which grow out of it, why may not my 
cherished floweret, my modest little Daisy, escape 
contamination from the sin and wickedness about 
her? 

"From the reek of the pond, the hly 

Has risen in raiment white, — 
A spirit of airs and waters, 
A form of incarnate light; 

Yet, except for the rooted stem 
That steadies her diadem 
Except for the earth she is nourished by, 
Could the soul of the lily have climbed to the sky?" 

"If childhood," said Eev. Mr. Ward, "best rep- 
resents the Christian character which is after Jesus' 
own heart, why need children ever lose it. The 
words of Jesus, ' Suffer little children to come unto 
me and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom 
of Heaven,' are words of immortal tenderness. 

"But the parents hroiigM the children to Jesus ! 
Do not our children slip away from us, because we 
indefinitely put off the time of bringing them to 
him?" 



HEAVEN AND WHAT IT HOLDS FOR US, 97 

... ."To give them Christian home-training, be- 
ginning so far back that the children are never con- 
scious of when it began, and continuing through life, 
is the true way." 

November 15. — I have been contemplating, with 
a sad heart, the nakedness and decay and desolation, 
which are about us everywhere in these dull November 
days ; — but I think that I have gathered from such 
contemplation, a sweet little lesson. 

As the fallen leaves of autumn, though with- 
ered and dead, help to nourish and fertilize the 
parent trees, building them up into graceful forms 
and beautiful proportions, from year to year : — so 
should the bitter experiences of life, — loss and sorrow 
and pain, — disappointed hopes and vanished joys, 
which have stripped us, clean as the monarchs of the 
forest, contribute steadily to the growth and develop- 
ment of a nobler Christian character; — a character 
more fit for the blessedness and glory of the heavenly 
life, toward which we are swiftly tending, and to 
such we really belong. 

For this w^orld is not our home; — we are far 
frem the place of our rest; — we are citizens of 
another and better country. 

It is difficult to understand Paul's meaning, in 
the twentieth verse of the third chapter of Phillipians 
where he says, as we have it in the old version, '*for 
our conversation is in Heaven." But the new version, 
which reads, '*our citizenship is in Heaven," makes 
the meaning clear and impressive. Especially was 
it so to the Christians at Phillipi, which was a Roman 



98 OUT OF DABKXESS IX TO LIGHT. 

colony, and very proud of its allegiance to Imperial 
Rome. Though residing in Phillippi, they felt that 
their citizenship was in that great and proud capital, 
which then ruled the world. 

By the use of this word, ''citizenship," then, 
Paul could best convey to them his idea of their re- 
lation to the Heavenly Kingdom ; because they 
could so perfectly understand how it is to be citizens 
of a country without being actual d^Aellers therein. 

So are we all citizens of that glorious country. 
Our highest allegiance is to God and our highest 
law his everlasting law of right. Heaven is the home 
to which we look forward with longing eyes, for "here 
we have no continuing city, but we seek one to come," 
— a city which hath foundations, whose Builder and 
Maker is God." Let us "lay up for ourselves treas- 
ures in Heaven where neither moth nor rust doth 
corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor 
steal." 

Our dear friends are there — our parents, our 
brothers and sisters, our children ; — and as we look 
over the years of the past, and note how many of the 
faithful friends whom we have counted as ours, during 
our earthly sojourn, have passed on to the other life, 
we feel assured that if we are to know them there, 
we shall be at home in that blessed land. 

"I have about as large a congregation in Heaven, 
now," said Father Taylor, ''as I have here on earth, 
and as the years revolve, the heavenly one will become 
the greater ; so that I shall be more at home there 
than here." 



HEAVEN AND WHAT IT HOLDS FOR US. 99 

He did not say ''if we are to know tliem there !" 

Oil ! what would I not give, sometimes, when 
beset with nameless questionings and fears, for the 
serene faith, the unfaltering trust, the lively ap- 
prehension of divine truth, evinced by the straight- 
forward language of this faithful "Father in Israel." 

How glad w^ould I be if there were no lurking 
fears to disturb — no painful disquietude, born of the 
whisperings of lingering doubt, to invade the sanct- 
uary of my soul's faith ! "Lord, I believe ; help thou 
mine unbelief !" is the cry of my heart, and I seem 
to understand, or feel the force of its meaning as 
never before, for there is nothing harder to get and 
to keep, than absolute unquestioning faith in the 
restoration of what we have lost. 

I remember when I, who had not yet found 
comfort for myself, was trying, vainly, to comfort 
poor Llewen, by telling him that we should see her 
— our dear Ruby — in Heaven, he replied, with a 
weary, hopeless expression on his face, which I can 
never forget, and in a voice choked with the agony of 
doubt, "-'How could ice find her among so many ?" 

And even yet, in spite of the assurances wdiich 
we find in the Bible, and in the words of inspired 
and devoted men, everywhere, in spite of the faith 
treasured in our own souls — the most precious thing 
we know — the faith which uplifts us and sustains us 
in our dreadful loneliness, the old, sad, hard question 
will sometimes come up, '' How could we find her ? " 

November 19. — I received by to-day's post, a 
beautiful little picture in oils, painted by a friend in 



100 OUT OF DARKNESS INTO LIGHT. 

a distant city, a lady who has enjoyed rare opportu- 
nities for cultivation in Art, and has improved them 
well. 

Looking at this picture — a simple little knot of 
''Sweet Peas," on a background of black — and 
thinking of the giver, whom I have not seen for 
many years, I am reminded of the far away time, 
when she and I were together, plodding slowly along 
with our daily tasks, in a Village Academy, she 
knowing as little of Euskin, as I, of Spencer or 
Oarlyle ; but, loving, with all her soul, the ideal 
beauty of which so small a realization could come 
into her narrow, rigorous life. 

Among the changes which Time has wrought for 
her, may be noted the capture of the shy nymph, 
Success, whom we both strove to reach, but who has 
thus far eluded my slower grasp. 

She is an Artist-^ now, though she lays no claim 
to such distinction. 

Here is what she says of the Flower Piece, as if 
it were not a gem of its kind, — 

'' I send you a very imperfect little picture, but 
I painted it ! I could buy one which would be much 
finer, but I am vain enough to think you would 
prefer this." 

Most assuredly ! — a thousand times ! Were it 
Raphael's own, it could not be half so dear to me, 
because I see in it the loving handiwork of an old 
and valued friend, and, in thoughtful contemplation 
of it, I can call up before me, the lineaments of her 
face, the tones of her voice, and the sound of her 



HEAVEN AND WHAT IT HOLDS FOR US. 101 

foot-fall. Oh, why do we cherish so tenderly these 
memories of friends so long absent and so far away, 
if we are not to know them on the other side ? — If, 
in our happy, heavenly home, we are not to feel once 
more, as of old, the hearty grasp of their outstretched 
hands, and read in their clear eyes the beautiful glad- 
ness of recognition ? 

Is faith as vague as all uusweet: 

Eternal form shall still divide 

The eternal soul from all beside, 
And I shall know him, when we meet. 

And love will last, as pure and whole 
As when he loved me here, in time. 
And at the spiritual prime 

Hewaken with the dawning soul. 

— Tn Me moria m, 

"If it is true, as has been said," wrote Dr. 
FoUen, " ' Know what a man loves or hates and you 
know the man,' it is certainly true that if he knows 
himself at all, in the next life, it is by his affections. 
It is by the sight or thought of whatever he likes or 
dislikes, which reminds him most powerfully of him- 
self in this life. Suppose a person to be transported 
to a far distant country, where the face of Nature, as 
well as the inhabitants, their language and manners, 
is entirely unlike anything that is familiar to him. 
He would feel a stranger indeed, even to himself, if 
it were not for the reccollection of what he loved in 
his native land. But, should he unexpectedly find, if 
it were but a simple plant, or hear the familiar note 
of a bird, or, still more, should he behold the face of 
one he has loved in his own country, the strange land 



102 OUT OF DARKNESS INTO LIGHT. 

would, at once, become a home to him. Thus the 
consciousness of our inclinations awakened by seeing 
those again who were dear to us, and who outran us 
in the course, will, in all probability, form the con- 
necting link between the present and the future 
state, by reminding and convincing each one of the 
identity of his own being. ' The first to live, the 
last to die,' affection will be, also, the first to awake 
again after the last sleep, to eternal day." 

"God does not send us strange flowers, every year: 
When the spring winds blow o'er the pleasant places, 
The same dear things lift up the same fair faces. 

it all comes back, the odor, grace and hue; 
Each sweet relation of its life repeated. 
No blank is left; no looking for is cheated, 
It is the thing we knew. 

So, after the death — winter, it must be; 

God will not put strange signs in the heavenly places. 

The old love shall look out from the old faces." 

" I can suppose," said Dr. Hedge, in '' Ways of 
the Spirit," ''that love, stronger than death, may re- 
voke the separation of death and give like to like. 
Souls that belong to each other, by all their affinities 
and all their yearnings, one would say, must, sooner 
or later, unite. 

" But these are matters we may trustingly leave 
— where, indeed, whether trustingly or not, we must 
leave them, with the infinite love which embraces all 
our loves, and the infinite wisdom which compre- 
hends all our needs ; assured that the Father of the 
house whose mansions are many, and the Father of 
spirits whose goal is one, wdll find the right place, the 
right connections and nurture for every soul he has 



HEAVEN AND WHAT IT HOLDS FOR US. 103 

caused to be ; that in the eternities, the thing desired 
will arrive at last ; that seeking and finding are di- 
vinely evened. 

'' Let us rest in the thought that life must be 
richer than all our experience, nay, than our fondest 
dream." 

It is said of the widow of Charles Kingsley that 
'' her faith in a re-union with her lost one is so per- 
fect, that it amounts almost to sight." And Mr. 
Colly er says of the late Peter Cooper, '' He had a 
faith in the immortal life, equal in some moments to 
vision, as men of such an eager up-looking spirit are 
apt to have ; and visions of the dear one who had 
taken his heart with her to Heaven, were so real to 
him and true toward the close that he also might 
have dated his last letter, as the Saint did, ' on the 
last day in this world and the first in the next.' " 

It is evident, from the quaint little saying of 
hers, which I quote below, that Mrs. L. Maria Child, 
not only hoped to meet her own loved ones, in 
Heaven, but she looked forward with pleasure to 
association with all the great and good of earth, 
whom she expected, with the simple confidence of a 
child, to see and know in Heaven. 

She made the Scripture real. *' And they shall 
come from the east and from the west, and from the 
north and from the south, and shall sit down in the 
kingdom of God," and surely to what purpose were this 
sitting down together, if they might not discourse of 
the things which make the soul wiser and nobler 
and better? 



104 OUT OF DARKNESS INTO LIGHT. 

This is what she said : ''I have a great many 
questions laid np to ask Plato, when I see him. He 
has been at the High School so long, he must knoiv a 
great deal.'' 

This reminds me of the story of an old Scotch- 
man who was asked by his wife : " John, an' are ye 
sure we'll know one another in Heaven ? " and who 
replied, very sensibly, " Aye, Jane ; an' do ye think 
ice'Il he bigger fools there, than ice are here ? " "^^ 

I think the New Testament teaching is that per- 
sonal identity remains and that it will be apparent 
to others as well as to onrselyes. To " sit down with 
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob," " sitting together in 
heavenly places," "sitting together at the right hand 
of God," "risen together," are all exjoressions indi- 
cating a state in which individuality is not only per- 
fect but recognizable, and from which the social 
element is, by no means, excluded. 

Peter and James and John knew the strange 
visitors on the Mount of Transfiguration, whether 
by their discourse, or by some intimation of Christ's, 
or in some other way, we are not informed. But it 
is clearly stated, that '^they ( the visitors ) talked with 
Christ." 

The declaration of the stricken king, '' I shall go 
to him " would become an empty and meaningless 
saying, if divested of the hope of recognition. 

If, then, we are to recognize our own dear ones, 
in the land of the blest, and cling to them with the 
old love which never dies out of our hearts, may we 
not reasonably suppose that they still cherish for us, 



HEAVEN AND WHAT IT HOLDS FOR US. 105 

the love and care which they had for ns, on earth ? — 
that they are always near, hovering about ns, in onr 
hours of trial, with yearning love and sympathy, and 
rejoicing with us in our happier hours, with a like 
blessed sympathy ? 

The angel said to John, '' Am I not of thy 
brethren the prophets ? " Why, then, may we not 
believe that the angels, or messengers — '' the minis- 
tering spirits, sent forth to minister " to us, may Ke 
of our own kindred, even of our own households ? 

November 25. — " Our dead are never dead to us," 
wrote George Eliot, '* until we have forgotten them : 
they know all our penitence, all our aching sense that 
their place is empty, all the kisses we bestow upon 
the smallest relic of their presence." 

''They do not die," says Tennyson, ''nor lose 
their mortal sympathy." 

" Why then," our poor yearning hearts, which 
are but human, must sometimes cry out. '-'Oh! why! 
— this unbroken silence, this wall of darkness, which 
shuts them from our mortal sight ? 

"O white souls ! from that far off shore, 
Float some sweet song the waters o'er; 
Our faith confirm, our doubts dispel, 
With the old voice we loved so well." 

Alas ! " In dear words of human speech," we 
communicate with them no more ! 

"It's an awfu' marvel," said Lauderdale, ''beyond 
my reach, when a word of communication, would 
make a' the difference, why it's no permitted ; if it 



106 OUT OF DARKNESS INTO LIGHT. 

were but to keep a heart from breaking, now and 
then." 

It is, indeed, a marvel to us all, until by medita- 
tion and prayer and faith, we have earnestly sought 
to come into sympathy with the divine purpose. 
Then a little light dawns upon our seeking souls, and 
— though still longing for just one glimpse of our 
lost ones, just one little message from loving lips, to 
show that all is well — we begin to see that it might 
not be best for us. 

If we could hold converse with our friends after 
they are dead, if we could see and know how blest 
they are, the bitterness of separation would be greatly 
mitigated, if not entirely removed ; and, instead of 
the exercise of that faith toward God which comes 
not by sight, instead of loving trust in his infinite 
wisdom, and patient waiting for his infinite blessing, 
we might, in our weakness and foolishness, be led to 
idolize our dear ones — now lifted to such high 
places — and to forget Him who is above and beyond 
all, who gives us this priceless hope, and holds for us 
in the secret chambers of the Great Unknown, the 
sweet surprise of a happy re-union with the friends 
now out of sight. 

May it not be that he has so ordered it for the 
wisest of purposes, — to secure not only our faith in 
Him, but our faithfulness to Him ? 

And oh, I have sometimes thought that it must 
be better for the pure spirits of our lost ones, that 
this awful barrier remain. 

For always by the memory of them, we are lifted 



HEAVEN AND WHAT IT HOLDS FOR US. 107 

up ; but if communication were permitted, might we 
not draw them down ? God knows. 

Did ye descend, what were ye more than I ? 

Is 't not by this ye are divine, — 
That native to the sky, - 
Ye cannot hie 

Downward, and give low hearts the wine, 

That should reward the high ? 

Weak, yet in weakness I no more complain 

Of your abiding in your places. 
Oh! still, bowe'er my pain 
Wild prayers may rain, 

Keep pure on high the perfect graces, 
That stooping could but stain! 

Wait there, — wait, and invite me while I climb; 

For see, I come, but slow, but slow! 
Yet, ever as your chime. 
Soft and sublime. 

Lifts at my feet, they move, they go 
Up the great stair of time. 

— Wasson. 

Well do I remember, how in the weary, wakeful 
hours of the night, after our Kuby went away, I 
used to long for her to come and speak to me ; — I so 
longed for one touch of her soft hand — one kiss 
from her sweet lips. I wanted so to tell her how 
sorry I was that I had not been a better mother, a 
wiser teacher, a more faithful monitor. I wanted to 
beg her forgiveness for my many failures in duty to 
her, for my dreadful lack of care and thoughtfulness 
for her, in those last days, when I knew not that she 
was going away from me. If I could but have one 
chance ! I bathed my pillow with bitter tears ; — I 
prayed in an agony of desire and longing ; — I strained 
my eyes in the darkness, as though with a feeble, for- 
lorn hope that I might catch some glimpse of her, 



108 OUT OF DARKNESS INTO LIGHT. 

but all in vain. No answer came to my sore heart's 
craving ; — no voice from out the dreadful silence ! 

I felt that it was hard, then, almost cruel, that 
this single solace should be denied me ; but, though 
I am only a very little wiser now, I am able to see 
that I was wrong. How could my shattered nerves 
have borne the shock of such strange revealing ? — 
for I knew that she was dead ; and that it was against 
nature for her to come to me ! 

And, alas ! if I could have borne it, was I fit for 
it ? With all my earthliness clinging abqut me, was 
I prepared for a heavenly visitant ? 

"How pure in heart and sound in head, 
With what divine affections bold, 
Should be the man whose thought would hold 

An hour's communion with the dead. 

In vain shalt thou or any call 

The spirits from their golden day, 

Except, like them, thou too canst say 
'My spirit is at peace with all.' " 

November 29. — ''Du bist so nake und dock so 
fern.'" I don't know where Euby found this little 
scrap of German, or why she fancied it so much, but 
I remember it was often on her lips, during the last 
few months of her life, here ; and seemed so familiar 
to her, that she was wont to repeat it, absently, while 
about her childish play. 

I found it, after her death, in a little diary of 
hers, which I had never before seen, — carefully 
written as though she had feared that she might 
forget it. 

She was always picking up bits of poetry and 
song, in her reading, and saying them over and over 



HEAVEN AND WHAT IT HOLDS FOR US. 109 

to herself, and sometimes committing them to writing; 
so I paid but little attention to this new favorite of 
hers, except to note her fondness for it. But I have 
often wondered, since, why she became so attached to a 
saying, the meaning of which she could not under- 
stand, for she knew next to nothing of the German 
tongue. 

Was there a subtle sense of its sweetness in her 
soul, independent of all forms or words or interpreta- 
tions ? 

" Thou art so near, and yet so far ! " 

Oh ; Euby, Euby ! 

"Can it be, oh love, that you love me less, 

On the far, white hills of God? 
That your heart holds less of tenderness 

Than when the earth you trod? 

*That where I am, ye may also be;' 

Ah, love, how the light breathes through! 

You went to your Father, like him, and lo! 
You are 'with me alway,' too!" 

So far, and yet so near ! 

So near ! Not in visible form, not with per- 
ceptible appearance, not with the voice, the smile, 
and the lips which brought gladness to my heart of 
old ; but with that invisible presence — that in- 
definable spiritual nearness, which sets at naught the 
passage of time and the intervention of distance, and 
gives her to me alicays, wherever I may roam, how- 
ever long I may live here. 

Ah ! if we could only understand this ! If we could 
clearly comprehend the fact of spiritual existence, in- 
tangible, invisible (to us), but real and perfect, full 
of all lovely and beautiful attributes, all nobleness of 



110 OUT OF DARKSESS IXTO LIGHT. 

purpose, all excellence of attainment, all richness of 
enjoyment ; — full to overflowing I 

And why can we not better comprehend this ? 

We know how precious, beyond all price, are the 
invisible things of this life. — the mother's deathless 
love, prompting to deeds of wondrous self-sacrifice 
and heroism ; — the wife's consfancjj, defying neglect, 
unkindness and desertion ; the child's simple, loving 
faith in the parental wisdom and the parental guid- 
ance ! 

It is not the letter of our friend,, but the Jove 
which is back of it. which is so precious to us ; not 
the printed page we are reading that affects us so, 
but the fire and fervor, or the tenderness and pathos, 
T^hich move the utterances of the writer ! 

Is not that a purely spiritual bond which binds 
us to the good and noble souls who have lived and 
labored for humanity, both in the past and present ? 
We feel ourselves drawn by the invisiljle cords of 
sympathy, toward the lovely and beautiful characters 
of history — men and women who have given them- 
selves to works of goodness and mercy, — who are 
benefactors of their race. — whom, having not seen-, 
we love. 

We who have have never looked upon the face of 
our great country-woman, the author of '' Uncle 
Tom's Cabin,'' who have never heard the tones of her 
gentle voice or felt the grasp of her warm hand, may 
still be conscious of an invisible bond, which brings 
us into sympathy with her, and makes her the sub- 
ject of our most ardent admiration and love. 



HEAVEN AND WHAT IT HOLDS FOR US. Ill 

" Are there not souls among the great and good 
of every age," said Joseph May, ''to which your own 
turns and clings, as by a power of mutual insight, of 
spiritual sympathy, which makes them of one brother- 
hood with you ? 

'-' Are there no heroes, poets, saints, of ages gone, 
with whom you feel yourself a familiar friend ? 

'* Are there none in that realm we call Heaven, 
to whom you feel as if your feet would tend instinct- 
ively, as you enter there ? " 

Indeed there are, and we feel an influence draw- 
ing us toward them, while yet we are so unworthy to 
"enter there." 

Many a saintly shepherd of souls, long since 
gone to his reward, continues to touch the hearts of 
men, as with ''live coals from off the altar," by those 
wondrous, living appeals which still go ringing down 
the aisles of time ! 

Many a sorrowing bard of long ago, has tuned 
his mournful lyre so well, and in such perfect sym- 
pathy with human loves and human needs, that the 
stricken soul still listens, spell-bound to its far away 
music, receiving such comfort, as even warm hearted 
living friends have not power to give. 

A touching little story of himself, which Senator 
Sumner once related to a friend, illustrates this 
thought. 

The second time that Mr. Sumner attempted to 
resume his seat in the senate, after having been 
struck down by Preston Brooks, he found himself 
still unable to control his faculties, and again obliged 



112 OUT OF DARKNESS INTO LIGHT, 

to return to his room. He sat down, disconsolate, 
and said to himself, " This is the end of my career. 
I shall never be able to do anything more in this 
world. I have come to the end." 

Tears started, unbidden, to his eyes, as he con- 
templated the utter ruin of all his hopes and plans 
for life. Opening, at random, a volume of Milton's 
poems, which happened to be lying near him, his eye 
fell upon this passage, in which Milton alludes to his 
own great misfortune. 

"When I consider how my li^ht is spent 

Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide, 

And that one talent which is death to hide, 

Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent 

To serve therewith my Maker, and present 

My true account, lest he, returning, chide; 

^Doth God exact day-labor, light denied T 

I fondly ask; but Patience, to prevent 

That murmur soon replies, 'God doth not need 

Either man's work or his own gifts; who best 

Bears his mild yoke, they serve him best; his state 

Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed 

And post o'er land and ocean without rest; 

They also serve, icho only stand and icaitJ'' 

''When I read that," said Mr. Sumner, "It 
seemed to me as if Milton were speaking to me from 
the other world, to encourage and comfort me, and I 
felt encouraged and comforted." 

Thus in a moment of extreme darkness and de- 
pression, was one great soul so drawn toward another, 
who had passed beyond his mortal vision, leaving 
only these simple words, that he ever afterward felt 
toward him, as toward a near and dear friend. 

A little later, while abroad, he procured a book 
containing an autograph of Milton, which he carried 



HEAVEN AND WHAT IT HOLDS FOR US. 113 

about with him, from that time, as a sacred memento 
of his friend. 

Thus we see that the bond of sympathy may be 
so strong between persons who have never seen each 
other's faces, as practically to annihilate all difference 
of time or distinction of worlds. 

'' Sympathy is the gravity of the realm of spirit, 
holding kindred sonls together, eternally." 

December 17. — Evening. — TKe winter is upon us, 
with its chilling winds, its dismal rains and fleeting 
snows, for, in this climate, snow does not abide with 
us long. 

My short days are so full of work and care, that 
I find little time for writing except at this late hour, 
when the labors of the day are over, and the house 
is quiet. 

Llewen has been fitting an axe-helve this even- 
ing, — preparatory to an excursion to the woods on the 
morrow — while I busied myself with the week's 
mending ; but he is now dozing over his newspaper, 
and things are gradually subsiding into that sort of 
dreamy stillness, so favorable to thought, when one is 
not too weary to think. 

Darwin and Daisy, having exhausted their wake- 
fulness over a merry little nut-crack, early in the 
evening, have both retired to rest. MoUie has just 
stirred the buckwheats, and cut the ham for break- 
fast, and is now nodding, quietly, by the kitchen fire, 
while she toasts her feet in the oven — her regular 



114 OUT OF DARKNESS INTO LIGHT. 

nightly concession to the needs of the flesh, of which, 
at most other times, she seems quite oblivions. 

Sitting here by the waning fire, with nothing to 
perplex or disturb, my thoughts have gone back to 
the long ago, when life was fresh and sweet, and the 
dew of the morning was on our path — untrodden, as 
yet, and stretching away into the rosy future, with 
endless promise. 

My memory has conjured up such life-like pic- 
tures of scenes long past, that they seem almost a 
part of the present. 

Ah ! how many a winter evening in that far- 
away time can we recall, with such vivid remembrance 
of even the smallest details connected with it, that it 
seems but a night or two ago ! 

And it is quite wonderful how incidents which 
we had not thought of for years, perhaps, are suddenly 
brought to mind by some casual circumstance, and 
every minutest particular is recalled with a keenness 
of relish, seldom belonging to the recollections of 
yesterday. 

Now, I am wondering if, in the future life, this 
power of mind — this ability to recall the past, will 
not be ours still ; — and if it will not be like all our 
other powers, so strengthened and perfected as to 
operate without interruption and without w^eariness. 

Will not our lives stand before us — every day 
and every hour of them — with the glory of a revela- 
tion, yet with the clearness and vividness of a lively 
remembrance, at once so minute and comprehensive, 
as to leave nothing out, however small. 



HEAVEN AND WHAT IT HOLDS FOR US, 115 



The dear old ''Moral Philosophy," I used to 
study at school, — and it was no mean authority in 
Ethics, I am sure — contained this statement : '-' No 
impression made upon a human soul will ever be 
permanently erased." 

(I must confess, right here, that I have lately 
looked the book through and failed to find this 
passage ; nevertheless, I am sure it is there ; it made 
an impression upon my young mind which it would 
be difficult to eradicate. It has thus, curiously, be- 
come a witness to its own truthfulness, said 
" impression " never having been even temporarily 
'^ erased.") 

Every thoughtful mind must find evidence, in its 
own individual experience, of the truth of this state- 
ment. 

Impressions received in our youth, while the 
mind is plastic and yielding, though they may be lost 
for a time, often a very long time, are frequently re- 
vived in a wonderful manner by the slightest of causes. 
Under favorable circumstances, then, might not all 
impressions be thus revived? The probability is that 
such impressions are obscured only on account of the 
engrossing occupations, the overwhelming cares and 
anxieties incident to this life. How easily, then, in 
the free, pure life which awaits us, the truly spiritual 
life, which is neither hampered by physical infirmities, 
nor burdened with physical necessities, may we revive 
the memory of all the past, - the dear, beautiful past ! 

'' It may be," says George MacDonald, '' thai 
when we have a higher existence than we have now, 



116 OUT OF DARKNESS INTO LIGHT. 

when we are clothed with that spiritual body of which 
St. Paul speaks, we shall be able to recall anything in 
nature or in art, we have ever seen, with an intensity 
proportioned to the degree of regard and attention 
we have given to it, when it was present to us." 

Oh ! then, with what depth of grateful emotion, 
what intensity of joy and gladness shall we, in our 
safe retreat, our haven of rest and peace, recall so 
many of the scenes and experiences of our earth-life 
— the births, the deaths, the partings, the losses, the 
sacrifices ! — and will not the joy of heaven be in- 
creased, a hundred fold, by the remembrance of these- 
things ? 

The sorrow and pain, so strangely intermingled 
with our happiest experiences in this life, will have 
lost their power to sadden or depress us, and we shall 
see the loving purpose of the Father in unnumbered 
things we had thought too remote from his care or 
too trivial for his notice, — as well as in other and 
greater things in which we saw only unmixed calam- 
ity, in the hands of a cruel fate. 

And so will our love for the Father, and our joy 
in his presence be increased a thousand fold, and the 
blessedness of Heaven be infinitely more blessed for 
the pain and the sorrow, the toil and the weariness, 
which we remember. 

And as for the real joy which our souls have ex- 
perienced — on earth, could we ever lose a single iota 
of it? 

Was it not the very beginning of Heaven in our 
souls, — a blessed foretaste of the joy to be revealed? 



HEAVEN AND WHAT IT HOLDS FOR US, 117 

So far from being forgotten, all the true and 
noble purposes, — all the generous impulses, and 
eager attempts to do good, which have made our 
highest happiness, here, fed and nourished by unfail- 
ing love, will grow into the higher and holier pur- 
poses and the grander achievements of the heavenly 
place ; and so will our souls attain to the perfect 
bliss — the perfect peace ! 

January 11. — It has been cold and stormy this 
week, the wind and snow and sleet making it decidedly 
unpleasant to go out, and quite as unsuitable for any- 
one to come in ; so we have been leading a very soli- 
tary and monotonous life, the days seeming as like 
each other as two peas, and all of them so dreadfully 
dull — so dismal and sunless ! 

If it had not been that '' two heads are better 
than one," we might have lost our reckoning, this 
week, completely. 

At the breakfast-table, this morning, Darwin 
looked up at me with a mildly enquiring, yet stolidly 
confident expression, and remarked in rather an 
affirmative tone, '* To-day is Saturday, isn't it ? " 

" No ; " said I, promptly and decisively, " it is 
Friday," when, happening to look up, I perceived 
that Llewen was laughing at me. 

" Well, what day is it, then ? " said I, perplexed 
and somewhat discomfited. 

'' It is Thursday ! " 

Then followed a careful review of the week, and 
of the things which had been done from day to day, 



118 OUT OF DARKNESS INTO LIGHT. 

(if, indeed, we could find that we liad done anything) 
until it was finally demonstrated, satisfactorily that it 
was Thursday, and Llew^en was left in possession of 
the field. 

For any chance we have of intercourse w^ith the 
outside world, in this stormy, wintry weather, we are 
very like the dwellers in an ancient castle, with the 
moat full of water and the bridge drawn up. 

Sometimes we do not get our mail for more than 
a week ; and then, wdien it does come, what a hulla- 
baloo there is, to be sure ; — Daisy screaming at the 
top of her voice, "Papa is coming ! papa is coming !" 
and as soon as he is inside the door, clambering and 
scrambling for ''The Youth's Companion" and the 
" Harper's Young People ; " and I, impatient, asking 
in vain for my letters, wdiile Llewen's head is buried 
in the ample folds of a mammoth news-sheet, with 
no eyes nor ears for anything else. 

Reading is the one diversion which never fails 
us, unless our scanty supply of books gives out, or 
the weekly papers are tardy in coming. 

I have lately been reading Charles Lamb's 
"Essays from Elia," which I find very entertaining. 

In "Dream Children," I noticed this passage, 
which seems wonderfully natural, considering that 
the "handsome, spirited youth," to w^hose death it 
alludes, and the dear children that crept about the 
author to hear the story, so many years afterward, 
were all a pretty myth, a delicious "dream." 

" When he died, though he had not been dead an 



HEAVEN AND WHAT IT HOLDS FOR US. 119 

honr, it seemed as if he had died a great while ago, 
— such a distance there is betwixt life and death. 

''I bore his death, as I thought, pretty well, at 
first, but afterwards it haunted and haunted me ; and 
though I did not cry or take it to heart, as some do, 
and as I think he would have done if I had died, yet, 
I missed him, all day long, and knew not, till then, 
how much I had loved him,'" 

Did he know, then? 

Shall we ever know the depth of our loye for the 
dear ones gone before, until we meet them on the 
other side ? 

To my mind, it is one of the great charms of the 
life for which we hope, that it has in store for us 
such glad revealings of the hidden depths of our own 
natures ; that there we shall know ourselves as never 
before, — that we may measure the height and the 
depth, the length and the breadth of our God-given 
powers, and put them to their strongest tests ; — that 
we may go on forever, living, loving, and doing, 
according to our highest capacity, 

I have been reading, also, an old work on the 
''Resurrection," 'intermediate state," etc., which, I 
must confess, did not interest me very much. 

The Scriptures teach, I think, that we shall be 
provided with a "spiritual body," precisely in what 
way, I do not care to know. I am glad, however, to 
believe that it will not be this body, though it serves 
us bravely here, despite its frailty; nor w411 it be 
formed, methinks, in some mysterious manner, of the 



120 OUT OF DARKNESS INTO LIGHT, 

identical particles — the constitnent elements of this 
body; which we see resolved to Earth again. This 
view seems to me as nnscriptural as it is unphilosoph- 
ical and irrational. 

Can we not trust Him who gives ns a body suited 
to our transient existence here, to provide us with one 
which shall be worthy of that higher and better life, 
which is to go on forever? 

And, as to an ''intermediate state," I frankly own 
that I do not believe in it. It does not seem to be a 
matter of any vital importance; yet, I believe that the 
soul enters upon the rest of Heaven at once — passes 
immediately from this earthly tabernacle, at the 
moment of dissolution, to the '' house not made with 
hands, eternal in the heavens." 

Christ said to the thief on the cross beside him, 
"To-day, thou shalt be with me in Paradise." 

It might be expected that those, miraculous in- 
stances recorded in Scripture, of restoration to life, after 
death, would throw some light upon this subject, but 
such, I think is not the fact. The most conspicuous 
case of this kind is that of Lazarus, but we are not 
informed that he ever narrated any of his soul-experi- 
ences, during the four days his body lay in the grave. 

" He told it not ; or something sealed 
The lips of that evangelist." 

In like manner, it may be, w^as the seal of silence 
set upon the lips of the little maiden whom Christ 
raised from the dead at Capernaum — the beloved 
daughter of Jairus, one of the chief officers of the 
synagogue. To the parents, Christ said, ''She is not 



HEAVEN AND WHAT IT HOLDS FOR US. 121 

dead but sleepeth," and to the child, in the Syriac 
tongue, " Talitha cumi, " " My little pet lamb, 
arise." 

"And she came again to life and was to them as 
before,'' says the simple record. 

But if the heavenly glories were revealed to her, 
in that brief separation of the soul from the body, 
no one is the wiser for it. 

Nor are we informed that any revelation ever came 
from the lips of Dorcas, the widow at Joppa, who so 
abounded in good works and alms-deeds, and whom 
Peter raised from the dead. 

But St. Stephen, the first martyr, after Jesus, 
left his testimony that the heavens are opened to the 
departing soul. "But he being full of the Holy 
Ghost, looked up steadfastly into Heaven and saw 
the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right 
hand of God, and said ' Behold, I see the Heavens 
opened, and the son of man standing on the right 
hand of God.' " 

''And they stoned Stephen, calling upon God, 
and saying 'Lord Jesus, receive my spirit ! ' " 

And then the narrative says, " he fell asleep.''' 

In order to appreciate the pecrdiar sweetness and 
beauty of this expression, we must consider all the 
atteudant circumstances. In the midst of a fierce and 
brutal mob— subjected to the shameful insults and 
bitter execrations of his enemies and at the same time 
suffering intense physical agony, this brave disciple 
exemplified the faith which conquers death, and "fell 
asleep," in Jesus. 



122 OUT OF DARKNESS INTO LIGHT. 

May we not understand from this, that nothing 
can come between the faithful soul, and the joy and 
peace which are revealed, as it passes from death unto 
life? 

"He fell asleep!" What restfulness in the very 
words! I remember noticing that ''Aunt Winifred 
Forceythe," alluding to the death of her beloved hus- 
band, used this variation ''He fell on sleep," though 
I afterward discovered that she borrowed it from an 
older saint. 

But it was David, the sweet sina'er of Israel, that 
clothed this idea with the most inimitable perfection 
of expression, "He giveth his beloved sleep." 

Of all the thoughts of God that are 
Borne inward into souls afar, 

Along the Psalmist's mnsic deep, 
Nor tell me if there any is 
'For gift, or grace, surpassing this. 
' He giveth his beloved sleep.' 

— Mrs. Broivning, 

January 25. — Thus far, this seems to have been 
a w^inter of calamities. It makes one shudder and 
grow pale to read the news columns in our late 
journals; — frightful holocausts, and dreadful disasters 
on land and sea, seem to be the order of the day. Oh ! 
how our hearts go out toward the surviving friends 
of the lost ones ! Especially do those terrible ocean 
wrecks which send so many human beings to a w^atery 
grave with such fearful suddenness, fill us with ten- 
derest pity for the dead, and compassion for the 
mourners who go about the streets; — there are so 
many bereaved ones ; so many who had no chance to 



HEAVEN AND WHAT IT HOLDS FOR US, 123 

say "good-bye," nor even to look upon the faces of 
their dead! 

Oh! the inexorable waters! the pitiless, the 
insatiable sea ! 

I wonder if we ever half appreciate that passage 
in Revelation, ''There was no more sea." — No more 
wrecks of gallant craft, and drowning of noble men ; 
— no more hopeless buffeting with the angry billows 
or helpless sinking in the briny deep, while the pulses 
thrill with life and health! No more treacherous, 
delusive sea ! 

Will not Heaven be dearer, unspeakably dearer, 
to souls without number, that in its safe retreat shall 
be heard no more, forever, the roar of the hungry 
sea! 

" There shall be no more sea; no wild winds, bringing 
Their stormy tidings to the rocky strand, 

With its scant grasses and pale sea-fiowers, springing 
From out the barren sand. 

No angry wave from cliff and cavern hoary, 

To hearts that tremble at its mournful lore, 

Bearing on shattered sail and spar, the story 
Of one who comes no more. 

There shall be no more sea ! No surges sweeping 

O'er love and youth and childhood's sunny hair, 
Naught of decay or change, nor voice of weeping 

Euffle the fragrant air 
Of that fair land, within whose pearly portal 

The golden light falls soft on fount and tree; 
Vexed by no tempest, stretched those shores immortal 

Where there is no more sea." 

January ,9i.— Last evening, Daisy was unusually 
restless after going to bed. She has her little cot in 
the sitting-room now, and it may have been a trifle 
too warm. I had just begun reading a new book, and 



IPA OUT OF DARKNESS INTO LIGHT. 

hoping to quiet her I read aloud from it that beauti- 
ful poem of Adelaide Proctor's, "The Lost Chord." 

Seated one day at the organ, 

I was weary and ill at ease, 
And my fingers wandered idly. 

Over the noisy keys. 

I do not know what I was playing. 

Or what I was dreaming then; 
But I struck one chord of music 

Like the sound of a great Amen. 

It flooded the crimson twilight 
Like the close of an angel's psalm, 

And it lay on my fevered spirit. 
With a touch of infinite calm. 

It quieted pain and sorrow 

Like love overcoming strife; 
It seemed the harmonious echo 

From our discordant life, 

It linked all perplexed meanings 

Into one perfect peace. 
And trembled away into silence. 

As if it Yv'ere loth to cease. 

I have so Light, but I r.Qok it vainly 

That one lost chord divine, 
Which came from the soul of the organ 

And entered into mine. 

It may be that death's bright angel 
Will speak in that chord again, — 

It may be that only in Heaven 
I shall hear that grand — Amen, 

She listened very earnestly, half raised in bed, 
as if trying hard to catch the meaning in the flowing 
measure of the lines, until I had finished, then she 
asked eagerly, and with a sort of triumph in her tone, 
like one who thinks to have found at last, the true 
version of some difficult passage, ^'Didn't she hit a 
key that sounded nice, mamma?''' 



HEAVEN AND WHAT IT HOLDS FOR US. 125 

And laughing, mamma could only reply, ^^ Yes, 
darling, that seems to be the plain English of it." 

But in justice to the child, I must set it down 
here, that there are some styles of poetry, which seem 
quite open to her juvenile comprehension. 

The sad story of ' 'Lorraine, Lorraine Loree," 
which Charles Kingsley tells in such quaint fashion, 
but with such remarkable pathos, has a wonderful 
charm for her; she learned it ''by heart," after a very 
few readings, and it is really quite amusing to hear 
her repeat, with labored emphasis, and in a kind of 
low^ 'rumbling tone which she deems appropriate to 
the words, that curious line: 

"Barum, barum, bariim, barum, barum, barum, baree ! " 

After she was fast asleep, I read, over and over 
again, ''The Lost Chord," and found much comfort 
in the beautiful lesson which it seems to teach. 

" Only in Heaven ! " How many fleeting moments 
of bliss, whose memory is like a holy benediction to 
the soul, our whole, long lives have failed to reproduce ! 

"Only in Heaven" can we expect to realize the 
bright and beautiful hopes, which even in the fresh- 
ness of life's early morning, have withered like the 
grass; — or the brilliant, glorious prospects that so 
quickly faded before our eyes. In Heaven alone, is 
the perfection of fulfillment — the fulfillment of per- 
fection. 

"Only in Heaven" shall we hear that ''Grand 
Amen." 

Pursuing this train of thought a little further, I 
am fain to conclude that Heaven holds for us not only 



126 our OF DARKNESS INTO LIGHT. 

the glory of fulfillment, but the joy of compensation. 
The wonderful beauty and loveliness of the heavenly 
place will have an added charm, methinks, for the 
eyes that were sightless here;— and the gladdest, 
most ecstatic praises, which find expression in the 
''songs of the redeemed," will come from the lips 
that were dumb. 

The deaf Beethoven — whose soul was full of 
divine melody, and whose wonderful symphonies, 
which have been the delight of multitudes, were, to 
his ears only a part of the vast silence — exclaimed 
with joy, in his last moments, ''-Now I shall hcarV 

And who can suppose that hearinq the grand 
music of the spheres, will not bring him greater joy 
than it can possibly bring to those whose senses are 
alive to the beauty of sound, through all their earthly 
journey ? 

With what supreme brightness, must the heavenly 
glories dawn upon the prisoned soul of poor Laura 
Bridgeman ! 

And oh ! will not the innocent victims of cuelty 
and wrong — the children of poverty and want and 
ignorance, be doubly blessed, when they come to 
stand among the redeemed of the Lord, in the 
Heavenly courts. 

What a delightful sense of freedom and joy, must 

come with the very air of Heaven, into the soul which 

has hitherto known nothing but repression and denial : 

And Heaven's long age of bliss shall pay 

For all His children sufiPer here. Brvant 

I have been reading lately, some very pleasant 



HEAVEN AND WHAT IT HOLDS FOR US. 121 

poetical descriptions of the glory and the happiness 
which are yet to be revealed. 

That was indeed a sublime vision which opened 
to Wordsworth's "Solitary," as he stood on a lonely 
mountain crag, after the passing of a storm. 

Glory beyond all glory ever seen 

By waking sense or by the dreaming soul ! 

The appearance, instantaneously disclosed, 

Was ot* a mighty city,— boldly say 

A wilderness of building, sinking far 

And self-withdrawn into a wondrous de[)th, 

Far sinking into splendor — without end ! 

Fabric it seemed of diamond and of gold. 

With alabaster domes and silver spires, 

And blazing terrace upon terrace, high 

Uplifted; here serene pavilions bright, 

In avenues disposed, there, towers begirt. 

With battlements, that on their restless fronts 

Bore stars,— illuminations of all gems ! 

Whatever this wonderful vision may have meant 
to his mind, to ours it can mean only the celestial 
city. 

But with all its sublime splendor, this is but an 
outside view— a vision from afar; — we like better such 
warm pictures as Bonar gives of the blessedness 
within the gates. 

Where the faded Hower shall freshen. 

Freshen, never more to fade, 
Where the shaded sky shall brighten. 

Brighten, nevermore to shade; 
Where the sun-blaze never scorches, 

Where the star-beams cease to chill ; 
Where no tempest stirs the echoes 

Of the wood, or wave, or hill; . . . , 
Where no shadow shall bewilder 

Where life's vain parade is o'er; 
Where the sleep of sin is broken 

And the dreamer, dreams no more ! 



128 OUT OF DARKNESS INTO LIGHT. 

Where dear families are g-athered 

That were scattered on the wild; 
Where the child has found its mother. 

Where the mother finds the child; 

Where the hidden wound is healed, 

Where the blighted life reblooms; 
Where the smitten heart, the freshness 

Of its buoyant youth resumes; .... 
Where we find the joy of lovinof 

As we never loved before, 
Loving on, unchilled, unhindered, 

Loving once, forevermore. 

These lines recall a fragment of an old hymn 
familiar to my childhood, which is in a similar strain, 
and as I remember it, something like this : 

* 'Where love shall freely flow, 

Pure as Life's river; 
Where friendship sweet shall glow, 

Changeless, forever; 
Where joys celestial thrill. 
Where bliss each heart shall fill, 
And fears of parting chill 

Never, no, never ! " 

In these glowing pictures of the life that is to 
come, we see nothing foreign or strange ; they repre- 
sent all that is purest and sweetest and best, in the 
life we have known on earth. 

So, " Earth's familiar loveliness," we may well 
believe, will "haunt the serener skies of Heaven." 

There will surely be nothing to shock the soul 
just passing from all that is dear in this world ; 
nothing to huH^ with painful sense of strangeness or 
of loss ; but rather, everything to fill the soul with 
that delightful sense of home-coming^ which leaves no 
room for disappointment or regret. 

For myself, I always fear to enter much into de- 
tail in regard to the future enjoyments of the soul, 



HEAVEN AND WHAT IT HOLDS FOR US. 129 

lest I shonld mar, by my clumsy conceptions, tlie 
glorious perfection of the Heaven I have not seen. 

" As for me," said the Psalmist, '' I will behold 
thy face in righteousness ; I shall be satisfied when I 
awake with thy likeness." 

The fear of making Heaven too material, seems 
to be less prevalent among writers than formerly. At 
least, this is what I thought on reading the closing 
lines of Mr. Chadwick's sonnet, " To Jacob Abbot," 
the well known author of the '•' Bollo Books." 

" Now thou art gone, so lonsr the children's friei^d! 
But as I muse, I seem, at Heaven's door 
To hear a sound which there I heard before, 

When Danish Hans that way did softly wend, — 
A sound of children, making merriest din 
Of tvelcomey as the old man enters in.'' 

But, on second thought, I decided that this is by 
no means as startling as the wonderful letter, written 
three centuries and a half ago, by the famous 
Protestant Reformer to his little son Hans, in which 
he presents Heaven to the infantile mind, as "a 
pretty, merry garden, wherein are many children." 

He continues, ''They have little golden coats and 
they gather beautiful apples under the trees, and 
pears, cherries, plums and wheat plumes ; — they sing 
and jump and are merry. They have beautiful little 
horses, too, with golden bits and silver saddles. 

"And I asked the man to whom the garden be- 
longs, whose children they were, and he said: ' They 
are the children that love to pray and to learn, and 
are good.' 

" Then said I, * Dear man, I have a son too, his 



130 OUT OF DARKNESS INTO LIGHT. 

name is Johnny Luther ; may he not also come into 
this garden, and eat these beautiful apples and pears, 
and ride these fine horses ? ' 

'' Then the man said, ' If he loves to pray and to 
learn and is good, he shall come into this garden, and 
Lippus and Jost, too ; and when they all come to- 
gether, they shall have fifes and trumpets, lutes and 
all sorts of music, and they shall dance and shoot 
with little cross-bows.' .... 

"And I said to the man, 'Ah! dear sir, I will 
immediately go and write all this to my little son 
Johnny, and tell him to pray diligently and learn 
well and to be good, so that he may also come to this 
garden. But he has an aunt Lehne, he must bring 
her with him.' Then the man said : 'It shall be so.' " 

Whatever ideas this remarkable man may have 
entertained in regard to the Heaven of mature people, 
he certainly gave his imagination loose reins, when he 
made this picture of the children's Paradise. 

Perhaps the memory of his own young life, so 
full of hardships and privations, and so destitute of 
pleasures, made him exceptionally gentle and tender 
and indulgent to his children, and thoughtful for 
their happiness, both present and future. 

And so his vision of their blissful Heaven, em- 
braced everything, which, in his view, could possibly 
give children pleasure; — everything that he could 
wish or hope for them ! 

And Charles Lamb, that most charming of essay- 
ists, seemed desirous of preserving in the heavenly 
life, all the sweet experiences of this, as may be seen 



HEAVEN AND WHAT IT HOLDS FOR US. 131 

from tlie following passage, which, however, modestly 
assumes the form of a. question. 

" Sun and sky, and breeze, and solitary walks, 
and summer holidays, and the greenness of fields . . . 
and society . . . and candle-light, and fireside conver- 
sations, and innocent vanities, and irony itself^ — do 
these things go ouf with life ?" 

March 29. — I have just learned of the novel 

entertainment at S (how I wish I could have been 

there ! ) which was called '' Our Sociable with Alice 
and Phoebe Gary," as it consisted mainly of recita- 
tions from their poems, the reading of selections 
from their biography, and the singing of hymns 
and songs written by one or the other of these gifted 
sisters. 

It was Phoebe, I believe, who wrote this beautiful 
hymn which is a favorite with so many. 

One sweetly solemn thought 

Comes to me o'er and o'er: 
I'm nearer my home, to-day, 

Than i ever have been before. 

Nearer my Father's house 

Where the many mansions be; 
Nearer the great white throne, 

Nearer the crystal sea: 

Nearer the bound of life, 
Where we lay our burdens dow^n; 

Nearer leaving the cross, 
Nearer gaining the crown. 

But the waves of that silent sea 

Roll dark before my sight, 
That brightly, the other side 

Break on a shore of light. 



132 OUT OF DARKNESS INTO LIGHT 

O, if my mortal feet 

Have almost gained the brink, 
If it be I am nearer home 

Even to-day, than I think, 

Father, perfect my trust 

Let my spirit feel in death, 
That my feet are firmly set 

On the Eock of a living faith." 

April 7. — Last Wednesday morning I set out 
some blood-roots {Canadensis) fresh from the woods, 
which Mrs. Swerdna sent me the day before. 

There was, as yet, visible above the mould only 
the buds of the root-stalk — quaint looking little 
pointed figures, in loose swaddling clothes, enwrap- 
ping the beautiful leaf and flower yet to be. 

I put the box in the south window of my little 
kitchen, and to-day, though it is only the fourth day, 
several of the plants are actually in blossom. The 
rapidity with which they have grown, is truly marvel- 
lous. The scape, bearing the flower-bud at top, shot 
np so swifty that we almost fancied we could see it 
grow. 

The bud, together with the rapidly growing, 
kidney-shaped leaf, but half opened, and loosely 
enfolding the scape, give the impression of a queer 
little, stilted body, with a white head and short, 
green cloak. 

The flowers, when full blown, are models of 
simple elegance ; — white, with yellow middle, of 
somewhat irregular outline, four sided rather than 
round, and quite scentless. They are such pure, 
spotless white, and the petals so delicately veined, 



HEAVEN AND WHAT IT HOLDS FOR US. ISS 

that one cannot help admiring them ardently, what 
little time they last, for like many another lovely 
thing, they are very short-lived. 

Looking at one of these pretty, snow-white blos- 
soms, one could hardly imagine anything sanguinary 
about the plant, but true it is, that the root, when 
bruised or broken, exudes a fluid much the color of 
blood ; the same being true of the leaf and the stem. 

What could be more beautiful, as a gift, than 
this box of lovely wild flowers, growing and blossom- 
ing under my eye ; they lift my heart above the petty 
cares and wearing work of life, to thoughts of Him 
who praised the lilies of the field, declaring that 
" Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one 
of these." 

April 25. — Since I wrote last, the spring has 
been fairly inaugurated ; we have shaken off the icy 
fetters with which Winter bound us, and emerged 
from his dark prison house, into the light and 
warmth, the freedom and joyousness prepared for us 
under the new order of things. 

The whole earth is renewed ; and so gloriously 
beautiful, so manifold and wonderful are all the fresh 
manifestations of life in Nature, that we seem to be- 
hold with reverential awe, the indwelling and inform- 
ing spirit — the divine presence and divine energy 
underlying aW. ''The earth is the Lord's and the 
fullness thereof," but at this time more than any 
other, does she seem to our entranced and enraptured 
vision, to be His, radiant and heavenly, in the new 



134 OUT OF DARKNESS INTO LIGHT. 

vestnre with which he has clothed her, pregnant with 
all sweet hopes and grand possibilities, which He 
alone can bring to fnll fruition. ''The true earth," says 
some writer, ''is situate in the pure heavens." The 
earth is God's temple, and no smallest part of it is 
devoid of his presence and power. 

" I want you," writes Mr. Bixby, " in order that 
you may reap the full rewards of this enlivening 
season, to open your ears to Nature's deeper speech, 
her diviner messages. Ask not of the earth, if you 
would receive her best answers, with hand and brain 
alone, but ask of her with the soul, and obtain the 
soul's gifts. Look not upon the face of God's crea- 
tion, with half shut eye-lid, but open your eyes wide 
enough to see the glory as of a diviner light, that 
shines within it. 

I want you when your ears delight in the birds' 
sweet carol, and your eyes gaze enchanted on the 
flower-enameled glade, to ask yourself whose wisdom 
taught these feathered choristers ? — whose hand 
painted these exquisite tints, that no skill of man can 
rival ? 

" I wish you, when you gaze enchanted, on the 
changing hues of the dying sunset, to remember the 
never-setting Sun of Righteousness, and when you 
watch the lily rising from its bed, and the buds, 
bursting from the hard bark, to recognize in them, 
the symbolic prefigurements of the renewed life 
which awaits the faithful spirit." 

Truly, " if a man die, shall he live again ? " 
seems a question to perplex us little, in the presence 



HEAVEN AND WHAT IT HOLDS FOR US. 135 

of this miracle of re-creation, — this marvellous 
uprising of the dead things of Nature to a new and 
vigorous and beautiful life ! With what joy and 
thankfulness, then, should we both hope and believe 
in the glorious restoration of our own being, waiting 
and longing for it, as for the promised return of the 
beautiful springtime. 

^'I trod the rustling carpet of the earth, 

When winter winds had bared the forest-trees; 
Hushed were the myriad sounds of insect mirth, 

That erst had floated on the summer breeze. 
No voice of bird was lieard in warblings sweet. 

No pleasant murmur of the growing- leaves. 
■'Death, death, I said, on every side I meet; 

And Nature for her buds and blossoms grieves,' 

Anon, I saw the earth apparelled new; 

Greenness and growth did everywhere abound; 
The skies bent over all their summer blue. 

And grand old hills, vnth bounteousness were crowned. 
The air was stirred with waves of happy strife. 

Where e'er I turned, I saw the eternal seal. 
*Lif e follows death, ' I said : 'Through death to life, 

Doth Nature thus the spirit's law reveal.' " 

" With Nature, every year is complete in itself," 
sa^'s Mr. Mann, ''every spring is a beginning, when 
* out of chaos and old night,' the voice of Omnipotence 
calls forth the earth. However misused the gifts of 
the old year, the bounty of the new fails not. The 
hand of God overflows with goodness. The divine 
love pours, in sunshine and shower, its healing balm 
over all the scenes of human hate. As a benediction 
from the Heavens, drops down the light of a spring 
morning, with some ray for the darkest passages of 
human life, — in some sort to neutralize the effects of 
blighting passions, the wretchedness of poverty, the 
bitterness of strife." 



186 OUT OF DARKS ESS IXTO LIGHT. 

Oh I will not tlie eternal years be infinitely more 
perfect ; — and the light of a spring morning dawn 
with ineffable glory upon the fadeless beauty and 
the matchless bliss of Paradise ? Who can tell 
what the hand of God which " overflows with good- 
ness" here, will prepare for the children of his love, 
in the hereafter ? Who can fell ? 

There is still another thought — connected with 
this subject — so sad and painful that though I have 
often dwelt upon it, I have thus far forborne making 
allusion to it, here. It is the thought of those poor 
souls who have missed the blessedness of Christian 
living, and have passed fi'om earth, uncheered by the 
precious hope of Heaven. 

This thought is one which we do not like to 
entertain ; — one which we would all put far from us 
if we could. But our nearest neighbor, it may be, 
follows to the grave, a dissolute, ruined son ; — or, 
the last post brings us tidings of an old-time 
friend, who has become an inebriate, and died in a 
diainken revel ; — the bright-eyed boy who used to 
sell us berries has grown up to be a murderer, and, 
but yesterday, di'ifted out into the Greed Unkiioicn, 
from the horrible scaffold; — and we cannot put it 
away ; it forces itseK upon us and will not be shaken 
off ! The di'eadful thought of their merited punish- 
ment, of the fearful consequences of sin, of the 
wretchedness of those poor souls who lived and died 
without God ! 

Alas ! How would such as these enjoy the society 
and the employments of Heaven ? — with their hands 



HEAVEN AND WHAT IT HOLDS FOR US. 137 

stained with innocent blood, their mouths polluted 
with vile oaths, and their whole moral natures, de- 
graded, besotted and loathsome ? 

O, who can bear to think of the misery of a soul 
lost, even for a time, to all sense of moral beauty and 
excellence, — all impulses to noble action, — ^all the 
dictates of wisdom and prudence ! — lost to all holy 
influences, all the warnings of conscience, all the en- 
treaties of love, all the pleadings of the Holy Spirit ! 
Lost! in God's universe of beauty, amid God's pleni- 
tude of mercy and his fullness of love. 

We have always a heart full of pity and com- 
passion for the unworthy dead. We look upon the 
marble face with its hopeless pallor, and its pathetic 
stillness, and say, " Yes, he was very wicked ; — but 
he was left a poor orphan, in early childhood with no 
one to aid or instruct him, no one to warn or restrain 
him. 

''He fell into bad company, but no hand was out- 
stretched to save him, and he went gradually down- 
ward, till he came to this ! God pity his soul ! " 

Not one of us but would open to him still, if we 
could, the door of opportunity, but would extend the 
helping hand, to lift his soul into the light, once 
more, that it might turn to God with penitence, and 
become again as He at first made it — a pure soul. 

How then, do we knoiv; or, I might say, what right 
have we to believe that that which we in our mortal 
weakness and mortal unworthiness would fain give 
them, will be denied to them forever by the Father 
of spirits, whose love and mercy and wisdom are 



138 OUT OF DARKX£S> IXTO LIGHT. 

infinite and whose mighty power is nnlimited ? 
Would we make God less tender, less pitifnl. less 
merciful than ourselves? 

The ^ish that or the living whole. 

Xo life may fail, beyond the grave. 

Derives it not from what we have 
The likest God, within the soul? 

Are God and Nature, then, at strife. 
That Nature lends such evil dreams? 
So careful of the type she seems. 

So careless of the single life; 

That I, considering everywhere 

Her secret meaning in her deeds. 

And finding that, of fifty seeds. 
She often brings but one to bear. 

I falter, where I firmly trod. 

And falling, with my wei^rht of cares 
Upon the great world's altar-stairs 

That slope through darkness up to God, 

I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope, 
And gather dust and chaff, and call 
To what I feel is Lord of all. 

And faintly trust the larger hope. 

Behold we know not anything; 

I can but trust that erood shall fall 

At last.— far off— at last, to all. 
And every winter change to spring. 

Oh! yet we trust tlat. somehow, good 
Will be the final goal of ill. 
— Tn Me mor ia m . 

In Longfellow's '''Hyperion," is a beautiful pas- 
sage which is typical of the tenderness of great souls 
toward suffering ones. — toward the tempted, the sin- 
ning, the criminal. '' When I take the history of one 
poor heart that has sinned and suffered, and repre- 
sent to myself the struggles and temptations it has 
passed, the brief pulsations of joy. the feverish in- 



HEAVEN AND WHAT IT HOLDS FOR US. 139 

quietude of hope and fear, the tears of regret, the 
feebleness of purpose, the pressure of want, the de- 
sertion of friends, the scorn of a world, the desola- 
tion of the soul's sanctuary, and threatening voices 
within, health gone, happiness gone, even hope, 
that stays longest with us, gone, —I have little heart 
for anything but thankfulness that it is not so with 
me, and would fain leave the erring soul of my fellow- 
man, with Him from whose hands it came." 

''Life is a school of discipline for us all," says 
Taylor, ''yea, perchance, even for those whom we 
now regard as the meanest and the worst. For in 
the meanest and worst, if we knew all and judged 
them mercifully, there would be found yearnings of 
human tenderness and gleams of better thought and 
endeavor, which show how richly ih.e inward nature 
was endowed, and forbid us to exclude even these from 
the hope of final recovery to goodness and God. 

'' AVe cannot believe that the great Parent Mind 
has made anything so great and noble as a human 
soul wholly in vain; and why has he scattered these 
seeds of moral and spiritual capacity so far and wide, 
if they are never to spring up and bear any fruit at 
all? And let us not say the prospect is too vast and 
overpowering to be entertained. We are in the 
hands, be it remembered, of an Almighty Father. 
Amidst the darkness which so often overcasts the 
present transitory scene of things, it is a glorious and 
consolatory thought, nursed and warranted by the 
deepest faith, that, in the solemn and mysterious 
process of development which is accomplishing itself 



UO OUT OF DARKNE88 INTO LIGHT. 

through the ages, under His guidance with whom 
time and space are nothing, and whose resources are 
absolutely exhaustless, all things may be tending here 
and in other worlds to the final reconciliation of every 
soul that has ever lived, with its Father and its God." 

My heart responds with genuine sympathy to 
this hopeful view, despite the opposing faith in which 
I was reared; and I feel like blessing the author for 
this passage, so beautiful in spirit, so rich in reverent 
thought, so pregnant with great possibilities for the 
poor, wretched souls, so commonly adjudged beyond 
the reach of mercy. 

And these lines from Gerald Massey, answer to 
my inmost conviction; and I can only wonder, as I 
read them, that they do not wake an echo in every 
human breast. 

How could I dwell 
Among the saved for thinking of the lost? 
With such a lot, the best would suffer most. 
Sitting at feast all in a Golden Home 
That towered over dungeon-gates of doom, 
My heart would ache for all the lost that go, 
To wail and weep in everlasting woe; 
Through all the music, I must hear the moan. 
Too sharp for all the harps of Heaven to drown. 
I think that Heaven will not shut 
Without a knocker left upon the door, 
Lest some belated wanderer should come, 
Heart-broken, asking jast to die at home; 
So that the Father will at last forgive 
And, looking on his face, that soul shall live. 

And Matthew Arnold sets forth in ''The Good 
Shepherd with the Kid," this feeling of human 
tenderness and Christian pity, which would fain 
enfold in arms of mercy, the erring and the lost: 



HEAVEN AND WHAT IT HOLDS FOR US. 141 

*He saves the sheep, the goats he doth uot save' 
So rang Turtiillian's sentence. But she sighed, — 
The infant church! Of love she felt the tide 
Stream on her from her Lord's yet recent grave, 
And then she smil'^d; and in the catacombs, 
With eye suffused, but heart inspired true, 
On those walls subterranean, where she hid 
Her head 'mid ignominy, death and tombs. 
She her Good Shepherd's hasty image drew, 
And on his shoulder, not a lamby a kid. 

That this generous sentiment is so widespread 
and so deeply rooted among men, is not without its 
significance. It must indeed, spring from what is 
''likest God in us," the more surely as it seems to 
accord with the divine will and pleasure, — the loving- 
purpose of God our Savior "icho will have all men to 
he saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the 
truth." ''Who is long suffering to us-ward, not icill- 
ing that any should perish, but that all should come 
to repentance." 

Who shall presume to sa}^ that He, the Creator 
and Preserver and Ruler of all, cannot, in ways which 
are all his own, icork out his sovereign will? 

" God worketh all things after the counsel of his 
own will." ''He doeth according to his will in the 
army of Heaven, and among the inhabitants of the 
earth; and none can stay his hand, or say unto him, 
'What doest thou?'" 

"I am God, and there is none else, I am God 
and there is none like me; declaring the end from the 
beginning, and, from ancient times, the things that 
are not yet done, saying, 'my counsel shall stand, and 
I will do all my pleasure,'' " 



142 OUT OF DARKNESS INTO LIGHT. 

So also was it the mission of the Son to do all the 
will and pleasure of the Father. Jesns said, "I came 
down from Heaven, not to do mine own will, but the 
'will of Him that sent me." And again, ''my meat is 
to do the icill of Him that sent me and to finish His 
work." ''Lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is 
written of me) to do thy will, O God." "And I, if I 
be lifted up from earth icill draw all men unto me." 

And we are also taught that the spring of this 
divine will and pleasure which Christ thus helps to 
work out, is in the supreme pity — the sweet and tender 
and merciful love of the Infinite Heart, toward poor, 
erring, sinful men, plunged into the depths of wretch- 
edness and despair. 

The Scripture writers have seemed to delight in 
exhibiting the divine quality of mercy in all its most 
favorable lights. 

''Thy mercy is great unto the Heavens." "The 
Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and 
plenteous in mercy." "Thy mercy is good.'' "Who 
is rich in mercy." "His tender mercies are over all 
his works." 

"I will make an everlasting covenant with you, 
even the sure mercies of David." " He retaineth not 
his anger forever, because he delighteth in mercy," 
and finally, " His mercy endureth forever!'' 



VI. 
THE MISSION OF SOEEOW: 

THE LOVING PURPOSE OF GOD IN AFFLICTION. 

August 20. — This little story of an iron egg, now 
in the Musenm at Berlin, has, hidden within it — after 
the manner of the egg — some interesting and valuable 
suggestions. 

A lovely young princess received from her affi- 
anced husband what she supposed to be a magnifi- 
cent present, but which proved when the wrappings 
were removed, to be a large iron egg. 

Disappointed and angry, the Princess threw 
the despised gift violently upon the floor, when it 
flew open, disclosing a beautiful silver egg, which in 
turn, opened by a secret spring, exposing to view a 
golden yolk. Concealed within this in a most inge- 
nious manner, was a ruby crown, and still within, a 
diamond ring. 

Is it not in much the same way that many of the 
best gifts, the richest blessings of God come to us? 
And alas! do we not often receive them as ungraciously 
as did this maiden her wonderful egg? — and how 
often, with a like distrust of the Giver in our hearts, 
instead of the beautiful confidence, that He can send 
us only c/ood-, whatever its outward semblance ! 

Even when great darkness overshadows the soul, 
and not a ray of light pierces the thick gloom of the 
impending Heavens, God, who is faithful, holds for 



144 OUT OF DARKNESS INTO LIGHT. 

US the inestimable treasure of his divine love, hidden 
beneath the silver lining of the cloud; and, safely 
guarded by this love, which cannot fail us, is the im- 
mortal crown, we are to wear at last. We shall learn, 
by and by, in his own good time, to open the secret 
springs and to comprehend, little by little, as one after 
another of his rich gifts are opened to our wondering 
gaze, the wisdom and excellence of the divine purpose 
for us; — learn to put our whole trust in Him, "in 
whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowl- 
edge." 

Sepiemher 5. — Four times has '' autumn flashed 
into autumn," again, since Buby w^ent away, and yet 
her memory is as fresh and green as ever. So many 
things about the house are constantly bringing her to 
mind — her books, which were the delight of her life, 
and the much used slafe^ with its muffled rim and 
broken corner, her many little drawings, rough and 
crude, it is true, but yet evincing a goodly talent, the 
imdl-pocket and lamp-mcd which her patient fingers 
wrought "for mamma," at her last Christmas prepara- 
tions, the clothes she wore, — and even her favorite 
dishes at table, the little pets she loved so much, and 
for which she was never tired of doing — all these 
things and a hundred others, less tangible, but quite 
as real keep the precious child in mind. 

''Dotty" and '' Dimmy," her motherless pet 
chickens, and for a long time, her special charge, recall 
her loving care and gentle ministrations, every time 
we look at them. 



THE MISSION OF SORROW. 145 

Perhaps they might be called old, as age ranks 
in the feathered tribe, but Dotty '^ denies the soft 
impeachment." 

She trips gaily about, happy and care-free, since 
she raised her last pretty brood, with her black 
feathers fluffy and glossy, ''caw-cawing," with a 
w^onderfuUy satisfied air, and in a voice so peculiar 
to herself, that w^e recognize it without seeing her. 

''Dimmy," poor Dimmy! has found life a little 
more serious, though he still seems to enjoy it, 
heartily. He hops cheerfully about on his clumsy 
feet, which were frozen badly, two years ago, and 
seems quite willing, notwithstanding his infirmity, to 
verify his little mistress' prediction, viz., to ''live for- 
ever." 

How w^ell I remember, when some one teasingly 
suggested that ''Dimmy would make a good dinner, 
by -and -by;" — how she straightened herself up, 
stamped her foot, and exclaimed vehemently, and 
with an air of authority, "Dimmy shall live — forever T' 

Her favorite kitten, which rejoiced in the appella- 
tion of "Csesar John," still survives though he bears 
the marks of age and is sadly broken in spirit. 

Her dog " Callie, " to whom she was much 
attached, continues lively and vigorous. In his 
puppyhood, Euby named him Caleb, having found, 
in some of her researches in nomenclature, that 
"Caleb," means "a dog." But this cognomen, prov- 
ing too unwieldy for common use, was softened into 
the more euphonic "Callie," and he has answered to 
that name ever since. 



146 OUT OF DARKNESS INTO LIGHT. 

We also have a dear old motherly top-knot hen, 
of a pale yellow color, with a ruffle of yellowish 
brown about the neck, which we have kept carefully 
all these years, because of the precious memories 
associated with her. 

This particular hen and her lovely brood of 
chickens, were a great care to Ruby, the summer 
before she died. The rats, that year, were so numer- 
ous and so bold, that hundreds of chickens fell vic- 
tims to their rapacity, and Ruby felt called upon to 
exercise the greatest vigilance, in her care of this 
little family. Every night, she shut the barred coop 
they were in, witii the greatest precision, putting up 
boards against the sides and bracing them with heavy 
sticks of wood, and filling up every little crevice, 
which she thought might possibly admit the smallest 
intruder. 

Many a time, during the summer just passed, as 
I have housed the chickens at night-fall, I have 
seemed to see her, kneeling beside the coop, shutting 
up "Hen Yellette," as she playfully called her, her 
heavy brown hair falling loosely over her shoulders, 
and her face radiant with the love she cherished for 
the little helpless creatures she was trying to save. 
She never shrank from the task — ^ never forgot them 
once, as I remember, and, when the summer was 
over, she had the satisfaction of seeing them all safe 
and happy, and large enough to take care of them- 
selves. 

Everywhere, I find something to recall her face or 
form, and always I see her just as she ivas. Neither 



THE MISSION OF SORROW, 147 

time nor change can affect the picture I carry about 
with me of my lost darling. 

Our living children outgrow th^ir childish looks 
and ways, while the transformation is so gradual, and 
we are so constantly with them, observing their latest 
developments, that we cannot retain the memory of 
what they were at any given time with such distinct- 
ness. Besides, we think of them, for the most part, 
as they are, rather than as they were. But those 
who have passed from sight no longer change to us. 

''A mother loses a child," said Dickens, *'it ever 
remains to her a child. It is only she that can be 
said to have a child. She remembers it, as it was." 

"One of the wisest of men," said Edward Everett 
Hale, "once said to me, in my profound sorrow, ^The 
children who die are those who are always ours. It 
is those who live, who become men and women, who 
depart to other continents and form other ties, — it is 
those whom we lose. Nothing,' said he 'can part me 
from my boy, who died when he was six years old. 
He comes to me when I call, and he is always the 
darling he was then.' " 

I understand how this is now. I could not, at 
first, think of my dear Ruby without a pang, such as 
left no room for comfort. 

But, gradually, a little light dawned upon my 
dull perception, and a little peace stole softly into my 
heart, at favored moments, and I began to see, dimly, 
what has become more and more clear to me, as the 
years have passed on, that my daughter is still mine, 
while she is safe and happy; — that God has not 



148 OUT OF DARKNESS INTO LIGHT. 

parted us, for though "she cannot return to me, I 
can go to her." 

And now, while my thought of her still recalls 
her image, unchanged, it is more as if she were still 
living, and less as if I had lost her forever. She is 
ever the same to me now, — the very same, — and 
hope is brighter and Heaven is dearer and God is 
nearer, than if he had not taken her to himself. 

"If sorrow never smote the heart, 

Ad J every wish was granted, 
Then faith and hope depart, 

And Hfe be disenchanted. 
And if in Heaven is no more night. 

In Heaven, no more sorrow, 
Such unimagined, pure delight 

Fr^esh grace from pain will borroiu.'' 

Yet, I look with tear-dimmed eyes, sometimes, 
upon the lovely daughters of my friends who are now 
what Euby ^' might have been" had she lived, until I 
reflect that she is in Heaven, and that site is all that 
Heaven can make her. 

Oh! how much more this means to me than it 
used to! If the plans which I have formed for my 
child's future have been thwarted here, are they not 
successfully carried out, on a grander scale, in 
Heaven ? 

If I thought of teachers and learning and cul- 
ture and the advantages of society for her, in this life, 
does not Heaven have all these and infinitely more? 

There are mothers — whose daughters are in 
Paris or London to be ''finished," or in Florence or 
Rome, pursuing their art-studies — whose hearts swell 
with pride and joy, at the thought of what these 



THE MISSION OF SORROW. 149 



daughters will be after years of study and thought 
and association with great minds; — but a daughter 
in Heaven! Why had I not thought of it before? — 
how infinitely more glorious the prospect for her! 

Who can tell to what unlimited heights of wis- 
dom and knowledge, what measureless depths of love 
and joy, her unfettered powers may attain, through 
the endless years, in that heavenly realm? — or what 
wonderful stimulus she may receive from contact 
with the great and noble souls, of countless ages, 
that make their dwelling there? 

And oh! she is safe from all danger, forever 
more! How blest the thought! Though my bark 
be tempest-tossed and threatened, momently, with 
destruction, I rejoice that hers is safely moored, in 
the haven of eternal rest. Though I dwell in the 
midst of sorrow and weeping, I am persuaded that 
God hath wiped all tears from her eyes, for there is 
^'no more crying," among all that assembled multi- 
tude around Jehovah's throne; and though I have 
yet the valley and shadow of death in prospect, she 
may look back, with complacency, upon its van- 
quished terrors, rejoicing in that glorious life, which 
is delivered forever from the power of death ! 

September 25. — My mind has been much occu- 
pied, of late, with thoughts of the wonderful good- 
ness of God, even in the saddest dispensations of his 
providence. I have been trying to see in how many 
ways he has blessed my own soul, through the sorrow 
and pain which seemed, at first, so hitter and so 



150 OUT OF DARKNESS INTO LIGHT. 

crushing, and from which it takes so long a time to 
recover. 

I find that the tenderness of His care and the 
largeness of His love were never more clearly mani- 
fested to me than in the results of the discipline 
Avhich I thought so severe. 

In the freshness of our grief we are wont to put 
away all thought of future compensation. Through 
the mist of our tears, we cannot see the glorious, 
sun-lit peaks, beyond, to which God means we shall 
attain, through this very sorrow which shuts our 
souls in darkness, now. Desolate, and hopeless, we 
question, dubiously with the poet, 

"Who shall so forecast the years 

Aud find in loss a gain to match? 

Or reach a hand through time, to catch 
The far-off interest of tears?" 

But, oh ! after years of mourning, and struggling 

against the divine will, when we have consented, at 

last, to taste the proffered blessing of peace, we begin 

to perceive, though it be but dimly, at first, how 

great is the gain, with which God matches our earthly 

loss! How exceedingly rich is ^'the far-off interest 

of tears!" 

"We all are creatures grief must nurture for the skies, 
And death must fashion for eternity." 

"Sorrow," some writer has said, ''is a summons 
to come up higher in Christian character." 

It is more; it is an influence which lifts us up, 
which purifies the heart, develops the hidden re- 
sources and latent energies of the soul, and strength- 
ens, ennobles and vitalizes the entire being. 



THE MISSION OF SORROW, 151 

"There are certain crises in life," says Bulwer, 
"which leave us long weaker, from which the system 
recovers with frequent revulsion and weary relapse, 
but from which, looking back after years have passed 
on, we date the foundation of strength, or the cure of 
disease." 

The experience of a great sorrow, must surely be 
one of these ''crises." What more stable foundation 
of piety and faith than that which is laid, with weak- 
ness and trembling, in the ashes of our buried hopes ? 
What more humble uprising to newness of life, than 
that which follows the baptism of tears ? 

Let us not fear, then, when the hand of God is 

laid heavily upon us; for we cannot know how great 

is the blessing, which he means, in the fullness of 

his own good time, shall grow out of it. 

"Then be content, poor heart ! 
God's plans, like lilies pure and white, unfold; 
We must not tear the close-shut leaves apart, 
Time-will reveal the calyxes of gold. 
And if, through patient toil we reach the land 
Where tired feet, with sandals loose, may rest; 
When we shall clearly know and understand, 
I think that we will say, ' God knew the best.' " 

God deals with his children as the gardener does 
with his trees, when he sees them growing awry and 
becoming distorted and ugly for want of pruning; he 
cuts away the dead branches and unsightly excres- 
cences with an unsparing hand, despite their shrink- 
ing and trembling, that they may stand erect and beau- 
tiful, and groiv and bear fruit to his honor and glory. 

But for the dreadful blow which seemed to us to 
bring sudden destruction to all our hopes, we might 



152 OUT OF DARKNESS INTO LIGHT. 

have been left to that selfish ease in our downward 
way, which brings most surely the ruin of the soul. 
This makes plainer that seeming paradox of Themis- 
tocles: ''I had been mined, had I not been ruined." 

"The fining-jjot is for silver, and the furnace for 
gold," said the wise man, ''but the Lord trieth the 
hearts." 

In the fierce fires of affliction, our stubborn wills 
are made to bend to His, and the temper of our 
hearts is changed. ''We wait beneath the furnace- 
blast, the pangs of transformation." 

So it is through the awful discipline of sorrow 
that we come to love the Great Master, with all our 
hearts; and that, finally, we are moulded into some- 
what of likeness to Him. Instead of shrinking, then, 
from such discipline, with fear and trembling, as we 
are wont to do, ought we not to send up to Heaven, 
daily, this pious invocation of Bonar? 

Great Master, touch us with thy skillful hand, 

Let not the music that is iu us die! 
Great Sculptor, hew and ijolish us; nor let 

Hidden and lost, thy form within us lie! 

Spare not the stroke! Do with us as thou wilt! 

Let there be nought unfinished, broken, marred; 
Complete thy purpose that we may become 

Thy perfect image, thou, our God and Lord! 

^'The gold of the sanctuary," said Lady Powers- 
court, "must be tried before it is accepted; and is 
thrown into the fire, not because it is of no value, but 
because it is so precious!" 

So sang the youthful Adelaide Procter : 



THE MISSION OF SORROW. 153 

Let thy gold be cast in the furnace — 

Thy red gold, precious and bright, 
Do not fear the hungry fire 

With its caverns of burning light; 
And thy gold shall return, more precious. 

Free from every spot and stain : 
For gold must be tried by fire 

As a heart must be tried by pain. 

'^A gem is not polislied without rubbing," says 
an old Chinese proverb, ''nor is a man perfected 
without trials." 

And here is a quaint little saying of Bishop 
Hall, written three hundred years ago, with the same 
purport. ''The best ground, untilled, soonest runs 
out rank weeds. Such are God's children, over- 
grown with security, ere they are aware, unless they 
be well cultivated, both with God's plow of affliction 
and their own industry of meditation." 

Goers plow of affliction! What could be more 
expressive? Is not the culture of our souls, the end 
and aim of all his dealings with us? and though His 
''plow" may roughly rend asunder the roots of selfish- 
ness and unbelief in us, regardless of our pain, is it 
not that we may bloom anew, with the beautiful 
flowers of love and trust? Nor does he withhold 
from us the rain and the dew. From him come the 
thousand unseen influences, which are shaping our 
growth and correcting our development, from day to 
day. All the varied experiences of our life, the fail- 
ure of our plans, the disappointment and misfortune, 
that so often discourage us, tend to strengthen and 
beautify our characters. Even those most dreadful 
mstakes and errors, that turn the wine of life to 



154 OUT OF DARKNESS INTO LIGHT. 

bitterness and darken all our brilliant prospects, have 
sometimes, in the end, a wonderful power to control 
and guide us in our upward way. 

They make us grow in all the higher graces, up- 
lifting us — by their very humbling — toward the 
light, toward Heaven and God! The larger our life- 
experience, then, and the fuller of adverse circum- 
stances and bitter chastisements, the more vigorous 
will be our growth and the more perfect our develop- 
ment. 

It is thus, if ever, that we shall attain to some- 
thing like the fulfillment of Christ's injunction, "Be 
ye perfect, even as your Father in Heaven is perfect." 
It is thus that Christ himself is represented in the 
scriptures, as attaining to perfection. "For it be- 
came Him for whom are all things, and by whom 
are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to 
make the captain of their salvation, perfect through 
suffering.''' 

Ah, yes! 'tis rich experience, bought 
At highest price, our souls hath taught 
How worthless are we all ! 
'Tis time, swift passing, with his years 
Hath "rained into our life some tears," 
And gently showered, here and there, 
The pressing need of earnest prayer, — 
And sweetly taught, by loss and pain. 
What is the soul's eternal gain. 

It is worthy of note, also, that sorrow and trial 
prepare us for greater usefulness to our fellows; and 
often secure to us such happiness as we could never 
have known but for the suffering w^e have endured. 
If we could have read the heart-history of those 



THE MISSION OF SORROW, 155 

whom we must admire and love, among writers, 
teachers and friends, we should doubtless find that 
their purest thoughts and noblest deeds — all lovely 
and beautiful fruits — grow from the '^ bitter root of 
pain." 

I believe it was Shelley who said that ''poets 
learn in suffering, what they teach in song." It was 
thus, surely, that Tennyson learned the beautiful 
trust, which makes his grandest poem so truly a 
"psalm of faith." 

And so our own poet, Longfellow, melted into 
his rythmatic measure, the costly pearls which grew 
in the depths of darkness and pain. 

And so, we fancy, it must have been that the 
poet with the blind eyes, painted his marvellous pic- 
tures of Paradise. 

And from her bed of pain, our well beloved 
Alice Gary sent forth those beautiful gems of thought 
which have made the world so much brighter and 
purer and better. 

It is said that Swinburne wrote one of the finest 
of his poems, "The Triumph of Time," while under 
the influence of the keenest sorrow that had ever 
fallen to his lot. 

And in that wonderful poem, "Adonais," the 
author (Shelley) was only giving voice to his own 
heart's deep lament for John Keats. 

It was during the experience of peculiar trials 
that Charles Kingsley wrote his ballad entitled, 
''The Three Fishers." We can almost feel the over- 
shadowing presence of his pain, as we read the lines, 



U6 OUT OF DARKNESS INTO LIGHT. 

For men must work and women must weep, 
And the sooner it's over, the sooner to sleep, 
And good-bye to the bar and its moaning. 

And what was it that lent such power and pathos to 
the words of Jesus, such wonderful success to his 
sacred mission on earth? Was he not ''a man of 
sorrows and acquainted with grief?" — a son of pov- 
erty and toil, full of warm and tender sympathy — 
deepened by his own experience of sorrow — for all 
who suffer? — of wdiom it was said by an unknown 
writer of his time ''who was heard, because he suf- 
fered." 

Thus, out of the shadow and the darkness, have 
come the best and noblest workers, who, with a 
strength not of their own, and a wisdom which is 
clearly of God, have moved the world. 

"Let me be weak a little," said Leigh Hunt, ''in 
order to be strong much." 

"When I am weak," said the Apostle Paul, 

"then am I strong." 

"Chastened by pain, we learn life's deeper meaning, 
And in our tveakness thou dost make us strong. " 

Again, sorrow gives us clearer insight into 
human character, greater respect for our fellow 
beings, and larger sympathy with all their trials. 
''Nothing so increases one's reverence for others," 
says Buxton, "as a great sorrow to one's self. It 
teaches one the depths of human nature. In happi- 
ness we are shallow, and deem others so." 

Thus it is that having passed through the deep 
waters of affliction ourselves, we are more ready to 
extend the helping hand, and know better how to 



THE MISSION OF SORROW. 157 

give efficient aid to those who are struggling with 
sorrow, and ready to be overwhelmed. Having felt 
and known what it is to be bereaved, we can under- 
stand, as never before, the sharpness of human pain 
and the depths of human misery, which is so wide- 
spread — so universal! 

For this life is full of disappointments and mis- 
fortunes, of every kind. The great world teems with 
conflagrations, catastrophes and disasters without 
number; — with storms and shipwrecks and floods 
and cyclones, that leave desolation and sorrow in 
their track. 

Hundreds are swept into the abyss of death in a 
moment, and thousands of waiting and loving hearts 
are crushed by the swift intelligence. Oh! are not 
we who have suffered, divinely commissioned to 
carry comfort and blessing to such stricken souls, 
wherever they may be? Should not our own sorrow 
be, as it were, a new ^'Shibboleth,'' by which is re- 
vealed to mourning souls our identity as fellow-suf- 
ferers; however it may be concealed from the rude 
gaze of the world? 

"I have lost my boy," said Mr. Hale, ''and he 
has lost his. In that there is enough to bring him 
and me together as we could never come before. I 
ought to be able in the new communion, to work out 
some of those results which never come to a man who 
is alone. What can I do to consecrate my own suf- 
fering, by making lighter and more tolerable the 
sufferings of others, whose lot is even more miserable 
than mine. 



158 OUT OF DARKNESS INTO LIGHT 

" Eacli of us has had his foot on the ground, and 
found how cold was the flint, aiid how sharp the 
thorn. So, each of us can consecrate the pang and 
the chill, by seeking others, in trial not unlike, and 
bearing his brother's burdens. 

^'Then sorrow ceases to be selfish luxury. It 
takes Us place as an angel of blessing^ 

I thank thee more that all our joy 

Is touched with pain; 
That shadows fall on brightest hours; 

That thorns remain; 
So that earth's bliss may be our guide, 

And not our chain. 

— Adelaide Procter, 

October 1, — AVhile in possession of all that heart 
could wish on earth, how little do we think of what 
Heaven has in store for us! — and oh! how often 
have we lost sight of God, in the multitude of the 
blessings which he has showered upon us! 

**And so he casts this shadow o'er our path, 
That we may pause while asking whence it comes, 
And, looking up, behold his loving face. ^' 

Oh! is not this the great secret of the divine 
discipline, — the purpose of a loving Father to draw 
his icandering children to him self? 

''This is the divine philosophy," says Dr. Storrs, 
''of much which brings us the sorest pain and unrest, 
here. It is to make us more enamored of what awaits 
us in the hereafter. Here is the hidden meaning and 
blessedness which the thought of Heaven brings in 
the events which seem most painful, — those events 



THE MISSION OF SORROW. 159 

which force sorrow into our hearts, and tears into 
our eyes and darkness into our life, and from the 
shock of which we think we can never escape. 

" The mother lays down her child, a part of her 
own life, with scalding tears; — and the world seems 
lonely and desolate, the heavens are brass, and the 
earth is iron. 

''But with time came to her mind the words of 
the Master, 'Know ye not that in Heaven their 
angels do always behold the face of my Father 
which is in heaven. .... Of such is the kingdom of 
God.' She remembers that he spoke this not as a 
theory or thought, but from his own consciousness, 
, — his own recollection of the kingdom of God, from 
which he had come. And the mother's thoughts go 
on with the life of that child, continued in unseen 
realms, as if she were borne up on eagle's wings, 
until she feels the reality of Heaven, and the beauty 
and charm of it." 

How delightful this sounds ! — and how true ! 
There surely is no other way, in which Heaven could 
become so real to us; — no other experience which 
leads us so to contemplate the heavenly state, or so 
to long for its happiness and rest. 

The dear ones gone before draw us Heavenward 
with an influence which is irresistible. Who does not 
know this that has looked for the last time upon the 
face of a loved child or parent or friend, and has 
gone on through life, with inexpressible yearnings 
for the old love, and the sweet companionship; — 
yearnings which have gone beyond this empty life, 



160 OUT OF DARKNESS INTO LIGHT. 

and have reached within the veil which hides our 
loved ones from our sight. 

And in thus reaching blindly out after those from 
whom we feel that we cannot be parted, have we not 
sometimes felt in the darkness the hand of the 
Father — the loving, tender, pitying Father? 

'' Did you ever think," wrote the Rev. Mr. Ward, 
in the sermon before mentioned, " that the afl9.ictions 
of this life may become to us the very means by 
which we may realize most deeply the Fatherhood of 
God? 

'^ A kind and true parent does not smooth every 
rough way for the child, but encourages him in pass- 
ing it, thus exercising the truest parental oversight^ 
So God may be most clearly recognized as our 
Father, in those very things which sometimes cause 
us to doubt him; and if in the midst of trouble and 
sorrow of heart, we will but turn our eye upward, the 
mute appeal becomes a prayer, which is never un- 
answered, — a petition which is met by his quiet re- 
sponse, 'When thou passest through the waters, I 
will be with thee; and through the rivers they shall 
not overflow thee.' " 

The more we are able to see the Father's hand in 
the chastening which he sends, the more do we love 
and trust him — the more do we realize that our lost 
ones are safe in his hands. Trust is a virtue of slow 
growth, and is best developed in the hard experiences 
of life. 

''Faith and trust, and the pledging of ourselves 
to the infinite ivlll and /ore," said Thomas Starr 



THE MISSION OF SORROW, 161 

King, '' are qualities that cannot be created in us, as 
natural forms of our inward constitution; they are 
results of the spiritual powers, set in opposition to 
hardship, perplexity, sorrow, and the sight of things 
seeming to drift wrong." 

So we often find that the more we are afflicted 
and the longer we struggle with adversity, the more 
clearly do we comprehend the largeness and the 
fullness of the Father's love; and hence the stronger 
and brighter becomes our faith in him; until, from 
our heart, we can say, with the Psalmist, ''Though 
He slay me, yet wall I trust in Him." 

Said Martineau, in his "Hours of Sacred 
Thought," "This it is that is the real ground of 
our trust and love: God is not merely the Power 
of Nature, but the Father of Spirits; his resources 
are not spent and used up in the legislation of 
the universe, but are large enough to overflow, 
freely and copiously, into the spirits that are in 
the likeness of himself. Hence, without violated 
rule, without breach of pledge, he can individualize 
his regards, enter with his gentle help into every 
mind, and while keeping faith with the universe, 
knock at the gate of every lonely heart. Stupen- 
dous as may be the net-work of determinate law, 
with threads fastened on every world, and continued 
through all kosmic ages, there is room enough in the 
interstices for the free play of the spirit that 
passeth where it listeth, — for the movements of 
an everlasting moral life, amid the natural, — and 



162 OUT OF DARKNESS INTO LIGHT. 

all the swift pulses of Divine affection. It is 
precisely in the union of these two — a customary- 
order he will not loose, — a free spirit he will not 
bind, that he is perfect in himself, and open to near 
communion as well as distant trust." 

What could be more beautiful and at the same 
time more satisfying to the heart than this exposition 
of ''the real ground of our trust and love ?" 

Evening, — It is worthy of notice that the terms 
employed in Scripture to represent the love and care 
of the Father, show by their great diversity, how 
large and all-comprehending is that love and care! 

He is called the "shadow of a great rock in a 
weary land," "a shelter from the stormy blast," a 
"strong tower from the enemy," a "shield and 
buckler" in the day of battle, a "rock," in the midst 
of Life's tempestuous ocean. Indeed, what is he 
not — in answer to every human need? 

Happy is the soul that, in all the painful 
emergencies of life, can flee to such a Helper, who is 
none the less a Father that he is God over all. 
Happy indeed ! for God can never be to us, while we 
enjoy uninterrupted prosperity, what he is when we 
have learned through pain and suffering to trust 
him. He becomes to us then, a living presence — a 
precious reality! 

"No dead fact, stranded od the shore 

Of the oblivious years; 
But warm, sweet, tender, even yet, 

A present help is he:" 

Learning to trust God, we come to believe that 
''He doeth all things well" — that "all things work 



THE MISSION OF SORROW, 163 

together for gootl to those that love him." Oh, what 
comfort there is in this assurance! 

"Think what it is," said George Eliot, in 
''Adam Bede," " — Think what it is to be frightened 
at nothing; to be sure that all things will turn to 
good; not to mind pain, because it is our Father's 
will; to know that nothing, — no, not if the earth was 
to be burnt up, or the waters to come and drown 
us, — nothing could part us from God, who fills our 
souls with peace and joy, because we are sure that 
whatever he wills is holy, just and good." 

''Doubts of God's goodness," said Martineau, 
*'do not come from the weary and overburdened, from 
those broken in the practical service of grief and 
toil; but from theoretic students, at ease in their 
closets of meditation; treated, themselves, most gently 
by that legislation of the universe, which they criti- 
cise with a melancholy so profound." 

The Scriptures recognize the sacred mission of 
sorrow — the loving purpose of God in affliction. "I 

have witholden the rain from you I have smitten 

you with blasting and mildew, yet have ye not re- 
tiirned unto me, saith the Lord." 

"Lo, all these things worketh God, oftentimes 
wdth man, to bring back his soul from the pit, to be 
enlightened with the light of the living." 

"No chastening for the present seemeth joyous, 
but grievous; nevertheless, afterward it yieldeth the 
peaceable fruit of righteousness, unto them which 
are exercised thereby." 

" Before I was afflicted, I went astray, but now 
have I kept thy word." 



164 OUT OF DARKNESS INTO LIGHT. 

'' These are tliey which come out of great tribu- 
lation, and have washed their robes and made them 
white in the blood of the Lamb." 

Of similar import, is the blessed invitation of 
the Savior, '' Come unto me all ye that labor and are 
heavy laden, and I will give you rest," — and this 
beautiful promise, "Blessed are ye that mourn for 
ye shall be comforted." 

Oh! has he not verified this promise to us, times 
without number, and in a multitude of ways, which 
we never could have guessed? How often has he 
filled our souls with joy, through those very channels 
which once brought us only pain! 

Ought we not, then, to be able, henceforth, to 
cast all our care upon Him? — to believe, in our in- 
most souls, that he is able and willing to give us 
rest, according to his promise, if we will only come 
to him? 

What inexpressible relief and comfort must 
result from the constant habit of . coming to the 
Savior with all our trials, — all our burdens, so that 
we no longer feel the weight of them; — of casting 
upon him all those cares and anxieties and fears, 
with which we are so '^ heavy laden," in the journey 
of Life, so that we can joyfully mount up ''on wings 
as eagles," — that we can run and not be weary, walk 
and not faint. 

I remember a little incident which illustrates 
this thought. The devout Quakeress, Sarah Smiley, 
was once descending the Ehigi, attended by a faith- 
ful old Swiss guide. It was a hard journey down the 



A 



THE MISSION OF SORROW, 165 

steep mountain path, for one wholly nnencnmbered, 
as the guide well knew; so he came to her at the out- 
set, and asked her for all her wraps and burdens of 
every kind. She committed to him the principal part 
of them, retaining only such things as she felt re- 
quired special care, and followed on as well as she 
could. She soon found, however, that her progress 
was much impeded by the little which she carried, 
and being fatigued, she sat down for a moment to 
rest. Then it was that her watchful guide returned, 
and firmly demanded that she should give him every- 
thing she carried, save her Alpine-stock. 

Having shouldered all her burdens, the guide 
seemed reassured, and again proceeded on the way. 

And now she found that, being free, she could 
travel with much greater safety, and twice as fast as 
before. Then, to use her own language, "a voice 
spoke inwardly, 'Ah! foolish, wilful heart; hast thou 
indeed given up thy last burden? Thou hast no 
need to carry them nor even the right!' I saw it all 
in a flash, and then, as I leapt lightly on from rock 
to rock, down the steep mountain side, I said within 
myself 'and ever thus will I follow Jesus, my guide, 
my burden-bearer, I will cast all my care upon him, 
for he careth for me.' " 

"Just to tell him everything 

As it rises; 
And at once, to bring to him 

All surprises; 
Just to listen and to stay 

Where you cannot miss his voice, 
This is all! and thus, to-day 

Communing, you shall rejoice." 



166 OUT OF DARKXESS IS TO LIGHT. 

Ocfoher 9.—''Seeh God in those hours which 
apj)ear to yoii so empty," says Fenelon, ''and they 
will become full for you." 

And so it is when, even though we fail to seek 
Him, He comes to us, with comfort for onr sorrow, 
peace and rest for our troubled and weary hours. 
And if we should look over our whole experience in 
life, should we not find that the times in which He 
has come to us — and made our hours full for us — 
are far more numerous and more notable, than those 
in which we have gone to him, and that always in the 
latter instance, we have been drawn to Him^ by the 
invisible cords of his love? 

**I sought the Lord, and afterward, I knew, 

He moved my soul to it, who sought for me, 
It was not I that found, O Savior true; 

Xo; I was found of thee. 
Thou didst reach forth thy hand and mine enfold. 

I walked and sank not, on the storm vexed sea; 
But not so much that I on thee took hold 

As by thy hold of me. 
I find. I walk, I love, but ah I the ^hole 

Of love is but my answer, Lord, to thee! 
Lord, thou wert long beforehand with my soul. 

Always, tJiou lovedst me!'' 

And oh! let us remember that whom the Lord 
loveth he chasteneth, even as a father the son in 
whom he delighteth." 

"Despise not, then, the chastening of the Lord, 
neither be weary of his correction." 

If he destroys our best earthly hopes, it is but to 
cause a new and better hope to spring from their 
dust; and though he permits great darkness to over- 
shadow the soul it may be only to prepare it for the 
grateful reception of the heavenly light. 



THE MISSION OF SORROW. 167 

The rebellious spirit may look upon afflictions as 
a visitation of tlie divine displeasure, but, reconciled, 
it shall behold them messengers of the Father's love. 
He has purposes for us, higher than our own, in all 
his dealings, but "his way is in the sea, and his path 
in the great waters, and his footsteps are not known." 

Then shalt thou by His hand be brought 
By ways which now thou knowest not, 

Up through a well-fought fight 
To heavenly peace and light. 

— Paul Gerhardt. 

I remember when Ruby was first taken from me, 
I felt that I could never, never again, be happy! 
never again be glad, whatever good might come to 
me, since it would be all too late for her to share it. 
Indeed, it seemed like a sort of sacrilege, so to forget 
the precious child that had gone away forever, as to 
be glad or happy, for a moment. It seemed to me 
then that to suffer anything on earth to beguile me 
into an hour's enjoyment, meant so much forgetful- 
ness of her. 

But here is what the Psalmist said: "Make us 
glad according to the time in which thou hast afflict- 
ed us, according to the years in which we have seen 
adversity. " 

And so indeed he does, if we are but willing to be 
made glad; for it is according to what we suffer that 
we are, finally, brought into such relations to him, as 
to ensure more or less of the blessing of his presence 
and the joy of his love. It is thus that we are prepared, 
more or less perfectly, for the indwelling, in our 
hearts, of his blessed spirit, which we might have 



168 OUT OF DARKNESS INTO LIGHT. 

rejected^ or failed to make room for, in the full tide 
of prosperity. 

When we have lost something very precious out 
of our life here, that we know can never be restored, 
aye when we have felt our very being rent in sunder 
and a part of our own life lopped off, and buried out 
of sight, with no hope of resurrection for it, com- 
pelled ' Vith so much gone, of life and love, to still live 
on," oh! what refuge could we find but in God? 
What consolation, what hope, save that which he 
gives? 

We are driven in our desperation and helpless- 
ness to him, but without any adequate conception of 
what he can do for us. At first we cry to him, be- 
cause we know that there is none other that can hear 
or help. 

Out of our dreadful agony and our sense of ntter 
helplessness, we call upon him, though it seems to 
us that there is no help or comfort in the universe, 
since nothing can bring back our dead. 

Ah ! we could not know 

— *'that lengthened breath, 
Is not the sweetest gift God sends his friend; 
And that, sometimes, the sable pall of death, 
Conceals the fairest boon his love can send," 

We come to know and feel this, gradually, after 
months, or, perhaps years of humble waiting, and, as 
we begin to realize how blest a thing it is for our 
daughter or our son, or the babe that left us smiling, 
to dwell in the heavenly place, where no danger can 
possibly come, where is no pain, or sorrow, or weak- 



THE MISSION OF SORROW. 169 

ness, or apprehension of evil to come, but love and 
joy and peace, continually, we begin to see and 
"understand what it is to be ''made glad according to 
the time in which he has afflicted us." Having 
learned in the darkness of our Gethsemane, to say, 
"thy will be done," we can behold the light of the 
Father's countenance and rejoice in it. Did not 
Mary return even from the tomb, with a joyful 
heart, having seen the Lord? 

Some, I have no doubt, who have come very 
close to God, in their struggle and pain, and have 
learned to trust him perfectly, are enabled to thank 
him, reverenily, from a full heart, for the very 
affliction, which brought them to the door of despair! 

''Out of the very depths," says Mr. Merriam, 
''in which we cry, 'My God, my God, why hast thou 
forsaken me?' come inbreathings of celestial hope." 

"And pain hath gems that purely shine, 
Through suffering, perfect, graven where 

They catch the light from Love Divine; 

Shall we complain, such gems who bear? " 

Nay, let us not complain. It is our duty as well 
as our privilege to be happy; — happy in a higher 
and nobler sense than we knew in the days when 
nothing crossed our selfish purposes ; — happy in the 
possession of a great hope, a loving trust, a blessed 
foretaste of the heavenly life. 

"Where man's strength fails," said a celebrated 
divine, "there God's strength begins. When there 
is nothing more that human strength can do, there, 
in its plenitude, inexhaustible and abundant, beyond 
all scope of the imagination, is the everlasting pres- 



110 OUT OF DARKNESS INTO LIGHT. 

ence and power of Almighty God; and no man is 
ever lifted up into this power, that he does not look 
back with amazement, to think that he fretted, or that 
his courage failed, or that he ever thought there was 
anything on earth, for which he had a right to grieve. 

"A man whose head is crowned, and whose heart 
begins to beat with immortality — how shall he go 
sorrowing and cast down like a broken harp ? In the 
presence of God and the eternities, and all rejoicing 
spirits, surrounded as we are by loved ones calling 
back to us by imagination, by faith, (the father and 
the mother, the brother and sister and child, — all 
sainted names and memories) realizing that they 
live, that they are our witnesses, and that they buoy 
us up, by the power that God gives them, sent to 
minister to those who are heirs of salvation; — in 
this glorious company, how shall we bow down the 
head, as if we were prisoners or wore the chain, or 
had upon us the marks of disgrace? It is for us to 
lift ourselves up above visible things, into the realm 
of the invisible, and though there may be any 
amount of trouble, low down, to go above the cloud." 

The same writer, by way of illustration, alludes 
to the many parties going to the summit of Mount 
Washington. Some went when the sun was shining 
brightly on all below, but were soon enveloped in 
clouds, so that they could see nothing. 

"So, many go," he says, "out of worldly pros- 
perity, up to the Mount of Vision, and see nothing, 
being without faith, without hope, and without divine 
insight. Other parties went to the summit of Mount 



THE MISSION OF SORROW. 171 

Washington when the clouds lay low beneath, and it 
was raining, and men laughed at them; but when 
they had ascended they found the top of the mount- 
ain serene and clear, so that they looked over all the 
wide lands, and saw the storms emptying themselves 
below them. In the pure ether, they stood and 
looked dow7i upon that lohich had clouded their ivay 
up thither! And thus, to the child of God permis- 
sion is given to go up to the mountain top-, and look 
down upon the trouble and sorrow of this icorld!'' 

And here is a passage from "Beside the Still 
Waters," which I am sure Mr. Hopps would permit 
me to copy. It is so beautiful and so comforting, I 
wish to have it where it will be always at hand. 

"The universe is inexhaustible; the suns and 
the systems of space are illimitable; the harmony 
that produced and unites them, is perfect; the power 
that upholds them all is ample for all contingencies; 
and I am sure that the love of beauty shines through 
them all, and that delight in life, is revealed by the 
only world we have tried. How, then, can I hesitate 
to trust this inexhaustible and illimitable Universe, 
this perfect harmony, this ample power, this manifest 
delight in beauty, and love of life? I may not be 
able to comprehend how all will work for my restora- 
tion to life, or rather for my advance in life when 
this little day of earth is over; but neither can I 
understand how Nature was able to work, through 
millions of years, for a definite end, or how the trees 
of the forest or the grasses of the field came to be 
built just as they are, or what the mysterious thing 



112 OUT OF DARKNESS INTO LIGHT. 

is which we everywhere call 'life.' Gratefully and 
gladly, then, I turn to the resurrections of Nature 
to learn that, everywhere, death is not the last thing, 
but life: and then I come to my Father and I adore 
him and trust him and am glad at heart, to think of 
him, for then I know it will be so with me, and that 
I also shall not die, but live-) to develop myself, and 
to serve him in that real world of the spirit, whence 
all the living energies come, and whither all the sub- 
limated life of earth will go." 

"Art thou weary, tender heart? 

Be glad of pain ; 
In sorrow, sweetest things will grow 

As flowers in rain. 
God watches, and thou wilt have sun, 
When clouds their perfect work have done." 

October 29. — Returning one evening last week 
from a visit to a friend, we stopped a moment at 

Mr. W 's place. Llewen went in on a little 

errand, and Daisy and I sat in the buggy and waited 
for him. 

It was still and pleasant, but cool, with just a 
hint of coming chilliness, and we enjoyed for 
a while the autumn scenery and the softly falling 
darkness, until it began to seem that Llewen was 
never coming. At last there was a stir in the house, 
and a sound as of doors opening and shutting, and 
we thought our waiting was at an end. Still he did 
not come; we seemed to hear persons talking in a 
low tone, and a sort of beating about, among the 
shrubbery in front of the house, and finally Mr. 



THE MISSION OF SORROW. 113 

W — —'s pleasant voice saying, ''We'll get something, 
anyway." 

The sounds were now coming nearer, and the 
mystery was soon explained. 

It was Llewen and Mr. W bearing an im- 
mense bouqnet of dahlias, which they had been 
gathering in the darkness. 

There were fifteen or sixteen varieties, only need- 
ing day-light to reveal their snperb beauty and rich- 
ness. There was every color, and shade of color, one 
could reasonably desire, from the deepest crimson — 
almost black — to a delicate, pale straw color. 

Mr. W is a great lover of flowers, and has a 

fine taste, which, I suppose he first cultivated in his 
native valleys among the Swiss Alps. He once 
showed Llewen his large collection of botanical 
specimens, gathered in that delightfully picturesque 
and interesting region. 

I value this generous gift highly, and shall try 
to preserve some of the finest of the fiowers for a 
winter bouquet. 

Novemher 1, — On looking over this last division 
of my journal, I find that I have unintentionally left 
till the last, the best result, perhaps, — the highest 
purpose, of all those heavenly influences which 
affliction exerts upon the human soul. 

It seems, after all, to be the grandest mission of 
sorrow, to strengthen religious faith — faith in the 
eteryial God, faith in the immortal life! aye, to lay the 
foundation of this faith, in the hearts of those who 



114 OUT OF DARKNESS INTO LIGHT 

not only do not possess it, but who do not feel the 
need of it, nor even recognize the reality of it. 

"I buried my materialism in the grave of my 
father," said the well known Robert Hall. He had 
believed, or tried to believe, that the human soul 
must perish with its earthly tenement, until called to 
part loUh one whom he loved; when a conviction of 
the distinct existence of the soul, and of its immor- 
tality beyond the grave, forced itself upon his mind, 
and could not be driven away. 

In a similar manner, M. Hegard, Professor of 
Philosophy in the University of Copenhagen, may be 
said to have buried his atheism. Here is his testi- 
mony, given in the preface to a new edition of one 
of his valuable works. 

''The experiences of life, its sufferings and 
griefs, have shaken my soul, and have broken the 
foundation upon which I formerly thought I could 
build. Full of faith in the sufficiency of Science, I 
thought to have found in it, a sure refuge from all 
the contingencies of life. 

''This illusion is vanished. When the tempest 
came which plunged me in sorrow, the moorings, the 
cable of science, broke like thread. Then I seized 
upon that help which many before me have laid 
hold of. I sought and found peace in God. Since 
then I certainly have not abandoned science, but I 
have assigned to it another place in my life." 

''The whole grand edifice of philosophical reason- 
ing, which I had erected, dwindled to nothing at the 
touch of death;" said the princess Alice, daughter of 



THE MISSION OF SORROW. 115 

Victoria, alluding to the loss of her little son. " What 
would become of us in this life without the belief 
that there is a God who rules over each of us?" 

And then she, who had so lately been a disciple 
of Strauss, adds, with the simple humility of a 
believer, ''I weary for prayer; I love to sing hymns 
with my children." 

Said the pious and much revered Dr. Horace 
Bushnell, "I have learned more of experimental 
religion, since my little boy died, than in all my life 
before." 

And so we might go on multiplying instances, 
which show how, through the bitterness of sorrow, 
the agony of bereavement, is borne the faith tcJiich 
takes hold on God, and makes Heaven a living ideality 
to the soul; — how the cold mists of doubt, which 
have so long hung over us, are dissolved in the 
cleansing rain of helpless tears; and the pure sun- 
light of faith and trust, breaks through the clouds at 
last, bringing joy unspeakable, and the peace which 
"passeth understanding." 

And this great faith — this grand and glorious 
Christian faith, will sustain us through all the trials 
and conflicts of life; and cheer and bless ns to the 
last, when we have lost our hold upon all things 
earthly, — when we have nothing left to cling to but 
this all-sufficient faith. 

" When in your last hour," says Eichter, "(think 
of this,) all faculty in the broken spirit shall fade 
away and sink into inanity — imagination, thought, 
effort, enjoyment, — then will the flower of belief 



176 OUT OF DARKNESS INTO LIGHT. 

which blossoms even in the night, remain to refresh 
you with its fragrance in the last darkness." 

October 25. — I can see how needless was the fear 
which I used to entertain, that, if I should receive 
comfort into my heart, though it were but the small- 
est crumb, — if I should consent to be happy, even 
when some great blessing fell to my lot, I sh'ould be 
in danger of forgetting my lost darling. Not for 
worlds would I have forgotten her! But there was 
not the slightest danger. "Whatever else comes," 
says Mr. Hale, "in the kindness of God, or what 
men call the course of nature, we never forget. Love 
is not a thing to be moss-grown. In the midst of 
the crowd of blessings, fresh every morning and new 
every evening, the loss is remembered." It is 
impossible, whatever new happiness may come to us, 
to repress the 'longing for the touch of vanished 
hands, the sigh for voices which have been forever 
hushed." But oh! what precious thing in life has 
been so precious to us as the hidden image of our 
lost ones — the sacred memory which we have carried 
through the years, close shut in our chastened hearts 
subduing, purifying, elevating us, helping us heaven- 
ward, as nothing else could! 

'^What joy of our brightest days would we ex- 
change for the blessedness which God's angels of 
sorrow have often brought to us, — manna from 
above, in the desert places of our grief, communion 
with the Great Source of all light and love, a deep 
and abiding sense of our oneness with the blest in^ 
Heaven!" 



THE MISSION OF SORROW. 177 

*^Still whether fade the rose of love, 

Before a bii<ifhtinfi: wind of fate, 
Or, an^el-borne to realms above. 

It bloom anew at Heaven's gate; 

If once its glory blessed our life. 

We never wholly lose the past; 
Its ashes are with sweetness rife, 

And make us richer to the last." 

We are looking toward the sunset, now, Llewen 
and I; it seems but a little way to the golden bars of 
the softened evening sky, through which we seem to 
catch faint glimpses of the longed for rest. 

We know not how soon the gates may open for 
us, and the glory of the many mansions be revealed. 
We cannot help hoping that He will let Ruby come 
to meet us, our own dear Ruby, that Heaven may 
not seem so new and strange, and that the joy of our 
meeting with her may overpower our dreadful sense 
of unworthiness to enter there. 

Suffice it, if our good and ill unreckoned 
And both forgiven through thy abounding grace. 

We find ourselves by hands familiar beckoned 
Unto our fitting i)lace: 

Some humble door, among thy many mansions. 
Some sheltering shade, where sin and striving cease. 

And flows forever through Heaven's green expansions. 
The river of thy peace. 

There from the music round about us stealing 
We fain would learn the now and holy song, 

And find, at last, beneath thy trees of healing, 
The life for which we long. 

— Whit tier. 



118 OUT OF DARKNESS INTO LIGHT. 



At the end — 

My soul is full of whispered song, 

My blindness is my sight; 
The shadows that I feared so long, 

Are all alive with light. 
The while my pulses faintly beat, 

My faith doth so abound, 
I feel grow firm beneath my feet 

The green immortal ground. 

— Alice Cary. 



THE END. 



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